Visvesvaraya Technological University

Technical seminar on
BUCKLING OF ELLIPTICAL PLATES UNDER UNIFORM
PRESSURE

CONTENTS
Introduction
Objective of work
Literature review
Methodology
Results and conclusion
References

Introduction
The buckling of elliptical plates under uniform
compression has so far been studied for clamped edges.
Prompted by the lack of studies on such plate shape, this
paper attempts to provide further new buckling results for
elliptical plates without and with internal line/curved
supports
The method employed views the entire elliptical plate as
a single supercontinuum element, even with the presence
of complicated internal curved supports, by incorporating
the support equations into the Ritz function.

 The
elastic buckling of clamped elliptical plates under uniform

compression was first solved by Rayleigh-Ritz energy method

and deflection surface was approximatedwith hyperbolictrigonometric series in elliptical coordinates. Some upper-bound
buckling solutions were given for different aspect ratios = a/b,
where a and b are the half-lengths of the major and minor axes.
To find the solution procedure for determining the exact buckling
loads of clamped elliptical plates. Only an approximate formula
giving the relationship between the buckling load and the ellipse
eccentricity, e = is presented. The formula predicts accurate
solutions when the values of eccentricity are small; that is, when
the plate is close to a circular shape.

Objectives of the work

To present buckling solutions for simply supported elliptical plates and
to provide simple formulas for both clamped and simply supported
plates.
To present new buckling solutions for elliptical plates with internal
line/curved supports; the plate periphery may be either simply
supported or clamped.

Literature Review
1. C. M. Wang, and K. M. Liew :
.The recently developed pb-2 Rayleigh-Ritz method (Liew and Wang
1992, 1993) will be used for the buckling analysis.
.The method is designated as such because, for the Ritz function, it
employs a two-dimensional polynomial function (p-2) and a basic
function (b) defined by the product of the internal support equations
and boundary equations in which the latter are raised to powers of 0, 1,
or 2 corresponding to a free, simply supported, or clamped edge,
respectively.

 As an approximate continuum method, it:

i.

Eliminates the need of discretization of support conditions (which

means there are no "boundary or support" losses)

ii.

Does not require any mesh generation.

iii.

reduces the number of degrees of freedom required for accurate

solution by a considerable amount, making the method attractive
for usage in a microcomputer.

Methodology
Consider a flat, thin, isotropic and elastic elliptical plate of constant
thickness h and aspect ratio a/b, as shown in Fig. I. The plate is
subjected to in-plane uniform pressure N, and is internally supported
by some line/curved supports whose equations are specified. The
problem is to determine the buckling load of the elliptical plate. The
total potential energy of the plate is given by:

FIG. 1. Buckling of Internally Supported Elliptical Plate Subjected to Uniform

Normal Pressure

The transverse displacement surface may be parameterized by:

the subscript r given by:

To ensure direct satisfaction of the geometric boundary conditions, the

preceding basic function 1 (x, y) is taken as the product of the elliptical
boundary equation and the internal line/curved support equations, i.e

where n = number of internal line/curved supports; Aj = equation of the jth

internal support; = 1 for a simply supported edge; and = 2 for a clamped
edge. For generality and convenience, the coordinates will be normalized by:

Applying the Rayleigh-Ritz method:

And substituting (1) -(6) into (7) yields:

Where = Na2/D and the elements of the matrices are given by:

Result
Buckling factors = Na2/D for simply supported and clamped elliptical
plates with aspect ratios ranging from 1 a = a/b 4 were obtained
using the pb-2 Rayleigh-Ritz method (taking p = 13). Fig. 2 shows the
variations of the factors with respect to the aspect ratios.
Using the least-squares method for curve fitting, the following formulas
may be used to predict accurately (within a maximum error of 0.07% for
simply supported and 0.2% for clamped plates) the buckling load.

FIG. 2. Variation of Buckling Factors, , with Respect to

Aspect Ratios, , for Simply Supported and Clamped
Elliptical Plates.

 The preceding formula for damped elliptical plate is more general than
the one given by Shibaoka (1956), which is only restricted to plates
with 1 1.25. The results furnished by Shibaoka's formula differs
by at most 3% (at = 1.25) from the results given by (16) for its
limited range of validity.
Figs. 3(a) and 3(b) show the variations of the buckling factors with
respect to different aspect ratios for simply supported and clamped
elliptical plates, respectively, with an internal line support at a parallel
distance of 13b away from the major axis. Interestingly, the buckling
factors of the clamped plates are approximately double that of their
simply supported counterparts.

FIG. 3(a). Buckling Factors for Simply Supported

Elliptical Plate with Internal Line Support Parallel to
Major Axis

FIG. 3(b). Buckling Factors for Clamped

Elliptical Plate with Internal Line Support
Parallel to Major Axis

 When the internal support lies on the major axis (i.e., = 0), the ratio
of the buckling factors is indeed very close to two. It can also be seen
that the buckling factor increases with respect to the aspect ratio and
decreases as the internal line support moves away from the major axis.
Figs. 4(a) and 4(b) give the solutions for elliptical plates with a
concentric elliptical ring support whose aspect ratio is . The
buckling factors show sensitivity to the size of the elliptical ring
support. Future study may consider the optimization of the ringsupport aspect ratio so as to maximize the buckling capacity.

FIG. 4(a). Buckling Factors for Simply Supported

FIG. 4(b). Buckling Factors for Clamped Elliptical

Elliptical Plate with Concentric Internal Elliptical

Plate with Concentric Internal Elliptical Ring

Ring Support.

Support.

CONCLUDING REMARKS
The pb-2 Ritz functions for approximating the deflection shape make the
application of Rayleigh-Ritz method relatively easy for buckling analysis of
elliptical plates with various edge conditions and any number and form of internal
line/curved supports.
The method is very useful when performing an optimization study on the best
shape and location of internal supports for maximum buckling capacity. This is
due to the simplicity of the method in catering for the internal curved support,
since there is no need to bother with the coincident of nodes along the supporting
curves as required in discretization methods.
The simple buckling formulas developed for simply supported and clamped
elliptical plates and the buckling design curves for internally supported plates
should be useful to designers.

References
1. Laura, P. A., and Shahady, P. (1969). "Complex variable theory and elastic
stability problems." J. Engrg. Mech. Div., ASCE, 95(1), 59-67.
2. Liew, K. M., and Wang, C. M. (1992). "Elastic buckling of rectangular plates
with curved internal supports." J. Struct. Engrg., ASCE, 118(6), 1480-1493.
3. Liew, K. M., and Wang, C. M. (1993). "pb-2 Rayleigh-Ritz method for general
plate analyses." Engrg. Struct., 15(I), 55-60.
4. Shibaoka, Y. (1956). "On the buckling of an elliptic plate with clamped edge
I." J. Phys. Soc. Japan, 11(10), 1088-1091.
5. Woinowsky-Krieger, S. (1937). "The stability of a clamped elliptic plate under
uniform compression."J.Appl.Mech.,4(4),177-178.

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