Loads and Deformations of Buckled Rectangular Plates

The nonlinear large-deflection equations of von Karman for plates are converted into a set of linear equations by expanding the displacements Into a power series in terms of an arbitrary parameter. The postbuckling behavior of simply supported rectangular plates subjected to longitudinal compression and subject to a uniform temperature rise is investigated in detail by solving the first few of the equations. Experimental data are presented for the compression problem. Comparisons are made for total shortening and local strains and deflections which indicate good agreement between experimental and theoretical results.