INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CIVIL AND STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING

Volume 2, No 2, 2011
Copyright 2010 All rights reserved Integrated Publishing services

Research article

ISSN 0976 4399

Buckling analysis of axially compressed SSSS thin rectangular plate using

Taylor-Mclaurin shape function
Ibearugbulem, Owus M1., Osadebe, N. N2., Ezeh, J. C3., Onwuka, D.O.4
1,3,4- Department of Civil Engineering, Federal University of Technology, Owerri, Nigeria
2- Department of Civil Engineering, University of Nigeria, Nsukka
jcezeh2003@yahoo.com

ABSTRACT
A comprehensive buckling analysis of axially compressed rectangular flat thin plate with
simply supported edges was carried out. The study was accomplished through a theoretical
formulation based on Taylor-Mclaurins series and application of Ritz method. The Taylor
Mclaurins series was truncated at the fifth term, which satisfied all the boundary conditions
of the plate and resulted to a particular shape function for SSSS plate. The resulting shape
function was substituted into the total potential energy functional, which was subsequently
minimized. After minimization, the critical buckling load for the plate was obtained by
making Nx the subject of the formular. The resulting critical load was found to be a function
of a coefficient, H, and the values of H from the present study were compared with the
exact values within the range of aspect ratios from o.1 to 1.0 as shown on table 1. The
maximum percentage difference was found to be 0.098% for aspect ratio of 0.1, while the
least percentage difference was found to be 0.05% for an aspect ratio of 1.0. Hence, the
Taylor-Mclaurin series shape function obtained for the SSSS plate is a very good
approximation of the exact shape function for the plate.
Keywords: Boundary Condition; Critical Buckling Load; In-plane Load; Shape function;
Taylor-Mclaurin Series; Total Potential Energy Functional.
1. Introduction
Over the years, plate problems have been treated by the use of Fourier series or trigonometric
series as the shape function of the deformed plate. Some scholars solve the plate problems
from equilibrium approach and others solve the problems from energy and numerical
approaches. However, no matter the approach used, the use of trigonometric series (double
Fourier series and single Fourier series) has been predominant. Most times, when it is
becoming intractable to use the trigonometric series, trial and error means of getting a shape
function that would approximate the deformed shape of the plate would be used.
Navier (1823) solved a problem of bending SSSS plate using double Fourier series. However,
Levy (1899) tried solving plate problems using single Fourier series because the double
Fourier series as used by Navier converge slowly. Because of slowness in convergence of the
Fourier series, Krylov (1949) proposed an efficient method for sharpening the convergence of
the Fourier series. Kantorovich and Krylov (1954) also presented solutions of plate by
approximate methods of higher analysis. They made use of Fourier series in these
approximate methods. Many other researchers like Nadai (1925), Timoshenko and
Woinowsky-Krieger (1959), Iyenger (1988), Ye (1994), Ugural (1999) and Eccher,
Rasmussen and Zandonini (2007) also used Fourier series in their work.

Received on September, 2011 Published on November 2011

667

Buckling analysis of axially compressed SSSS thin rectangular plate using Taylor-Mclaurin shape function
Ibearugbulem, Owus M., Osadebe, N. N., Ezeh, J. C., Onwuka, D.O.

There is actually dearth of literature on the use of Taylor-Maclaurins series in solving plate
bending problems. Due to the dearth of literature on the use Taylor-Maclaurins in solving
plate bending problems coupled with the difficulties associated with Fourier series, this paper
used Taylor-Mclaurins series to solve the problem of a plate simply supported at all the four
edges (SSSS) and subject to in-plane load in one axis (X - axis) of the principal plane (figure
1.)

X
Nx

SSSS PLATE
a

Nx
Y
P = a/b

Figure 1: Schematic representation of in-plane loaded SSSS plate

2. Total potential energy funtional for thin plate buckling

Ibearugbulem (2011) derived the total potential energy functional for a rectangular thin
isotropic plate subjected to in-plane load in x-direction as follows:

Where a and b are plate dimensions in x and y directions. is Poissons ratio. Nx is the
in-plane load in x direction. D is flexural rigidity. W is the shape function.

.
;

;
If the chosen shape functions is a good approximation of the exact shape function, then

(Ventsel and Krauthammer, 2001, Ibearugbulem, 2011). Thus, equation (1) becomes:
International Journal of Civil and Structural Engineering
Volume 2 Issue 2 2011

668

Buckling analysis of axially compressed SSSS thin rectangular plate using Taylor-Mclaurin shape function
Ibearugbulem, Owus M., Osadebe, N. N., Ezeh, J. C., Onwuka, D.O.

3. Shape function from Taylor-MCLaurins series

Ibearugbulem (2011) assumed the shape function, w to be continuous and differentiable. He
expanded it in Taylor-Mclaurin series and got:

is the nth partial derivative of the function w with respect to y. m! and n! are factorials of m
and n respectively. x0 and y0 are the points at the origin. He took the origin to be zero. After
some modification of equation (3) and noting that x = a.R and y = b.Q, the infinite series was
truncated at m = n = 4 and got:

The boundary conditions for SSSS plate are

Substituting equations (5) and (7) into equation (4) gave:

;
;
;
Also, substituting equation (6) into equation (4) and solving the resulting two simultaneous
equations gave:
;
Similarly, substituting equation (8) into equation (4) and solving the resulting two
simultaneous equations gave:
;
Substituting the values of

into equation (4) gave

. That is

International Journal of Civil and Structural Engineering

Volume 2 Issue 2 2011

669

Buckling analysis of axially compressed SSSS thin rectangular plate using Taylor-Mclaurin shape function
Ibearugbulem, Owus M., Osadebe, N. N., Ezeh, J. C., Onwuka, D.O.

4. Application of Ritz method

Partial derivatives of equation (9) with respect to either R or Q or both gave the following
equation:

Integrating the square of these five equations partially with respect to R and Q in a closed
domain respectively gave:

Substituting equations (15), (16), (18) and (19) into equation (2) gave:

Minimizing equation (20) and making NX the subject of the equation gave:

That is to say

International Journal of Civil and Structural Engineering

Volume 2 Issue 2 2011

670

Buckling analysis of axially compressed SSSS thin rectangular plate using Taylor-Mclaurin shape function
Ibearugbulem, Owus M., Osadebe, N. N., Ezeh, J. C., Onwuka, D.O.

5. Result and discussion

The H values from this paper and those from Iyengar (1988) were presented and compared on
table 1.
Exact solution from Iyengar (1988) was

Where M is the buckling mode. In this case it is the first mode. That is M = 1.

The values of H for different aspect ratios are shown on table 1

The average percentage difference between the solution from Iyenger (in this case exact) and
the present study according to table 1 was 0.069%. It would also be noticed that the closeness
of the two solutions improved as the aspect ratio increased from 0.1 to 1.0. This meant that
the solution from this present study was a very close approximation of the exact solution.
Hence, the Taylor-Mclaurins shape function for SSSS plate was very close to the exact
shape function. However, it was shown that the solution was upper bound solution (that is,
the value of the solution is higher than the value of exact solution).
Table 1: H values for different aspect ratios for SSSS Thin plate buckling
Aspect ratio,
P = a/b
0.1
H from IYEENGAR
(1988)
102
H from present study
102.1
Percentage difference 0.098

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7

0.8

0.9

27.04 13.2 8.41 6.25 5.138 4.531 4.203 4.045 4

27.07 13.21 8.416 6.254 5.141 4.533 4.205 4.047 4.002
0.093 0.085 0.076 0.068 0.061 0.056 0.052 0.051 0.05

6. References
1. Eccher, G., Rasmussen, K.J.R. and Zandonini, R. (2007), Geometric nonlinear
isoparametric spline finite strip analysis of perforated thin-walled structures. School
of Civil Engineering of Sydrey , Research Report No. R880 (February).
2. Ibearugbulem, O. M. (2011), Application of a direct variational principle in elastic
stability of rectangular flat thin plates. Ph. D. thesis submitted to Postgraduate School,
Federal University of Technology, Owerri, Nigeria.
3. Iyengar, N. G. (1988), Structural stability of columns and plates. Chichester : Ellis
Horwood.
International Journal of Civil and Structural Engineering
Volume 2 Issue 2 2011

671

Buckling analysis of axially compressed SSSS thin rectangular plate using Taylor-Mclaurin shape function
Ibearugbulem, Owus M., Osadebe, N. N., Ezeh, J. C., Onwuka, D.O.

4. Kantorovich, L.V., and Krylov, V.I. (1954), Approximate Methods of Higher

Analysis, John Wiley and Sons, New York.
5. Krylov, A.N.(1949), Collected Works, 3(1-2), Academy of Sciences of the USSR,
Moscow in Russian.
6. Levy, M., (1899), Memoire sur la theorie des plaques elastiques planesJournal de
Mathmatiques Pures et Appliques, 3, pp 219.
7. Nadai, A.(1925), Die Elastichen Platten, Springer-Verlag, Berlin.
8. Navier, C.L.M.N., (1823), Bulletin des Science de la Societe Philomarhique de Paris,
9. Timoshenko, S.P. and Woinowsky-Krieger, S.(1959), Theory of Plates and Shells,
2nd edn,McGraw-Hill, New York.
10. Ugural, A. C. (1999), Stresses in plates and shells (2nd Ed.). Singapore: McGraw-hill.
11. Ventsel, E. And Krauthammer, T. (2001), Thin Plates and Shells: Theory, Analysis
and Applications. New York: Marcel Dekker.
12. Ye, Jianqiao. (1994), Large deflection of imperfect plates by iterative BE-FE method.
Journal of Engineering Mechanics, 120(3), pp 431-445.

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