Inelastic buckling of rectangular steel plates using a Rayleigh-Ritz method

The paper presents a Rayleigh–Ritz based non-discretization method of analysis for the inelastic local buckling of rectangular steel plates subjected to applied in-plane axial, bending and shear actions with various boundary conditions. Use is made of the pb-2 representation of the displacement function as the product of a domain polynomial and a boundary polynomial. The constitutive model for the plate is an adaptation of the von Mises yield criterion and the associated flow rule presented in an infinitesimal form, and which leads to an incremental and iterative method of solution. The convergence and accuracy of the solutions are demonstrated, and it is shown that the method of analysis is computationally feasible for the solution of inelastic bifurcative plate instability problems. A parametric study is then undertaken for a range of plate boundary conditions under various regimes of applied loading.