Elastic Buckling of Infinitely Long Trapezoidally Corrugated Plates in Shear

Abstract

Buckling loads are calculated for a class of infinitely long trapezoidally corrugated plates under uniform in-plane edge shear. This class consists of corrugated plates in which all interior plate elements are of equal width, with the end elements clamped. The energy method is used as the basis of analysis, which considers the corrugated plate as a nonplanar assemblage of flat plates. Buckling loads calculated using this method are compared to those obtained by using orthotropic plate theory, which represents the corrugated plate by an orthotropic flat plate. The comparison shows significant differences in predicted buckling loads.