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Buckling Strength of Structural Plates

A plate is a planar body whose thickness is small compared with its other dimensions.
Flat or slightly curved plates are frequently used elements in space—vehicle structure. A
plate structure, as defined herein, may be as simple as the flat web of a stiffener or as
complex as an integrally stiffened plate supported by heavy frames and rings.
In the behavior of these plate structures under inplane compression and shear loads, a
critical point exists where an infinitesimal increase in load can cause the plate surface
to buckle. The load at this critical point defines the buckling strength of the plate.
Increases in load beyond the load at the initiation of buckling increase the buckling
deformations until collapse occurs. Thus, the load at collapse defines the postbuckling
or crippling strength of the plate. The behavior of plate structures in this regard differs
markedly from the behavior of columns and many thin curved shell structures for
which the buckling load corresponds closely to the collapse load.
A fundamental problem in space—vehicle design is to size plate elements so that plate
buckling will not induce detrimental deformations at any expected service load up to
limit load (the maximum load expected in service), and that the design ultimate load
(the limit load multiplied by the ultimate design factor) will not exceed the plate-
crippling strength.
Buckling of a plate structure can cause an unacceptable degradation in the
aerodynamic profile of a space vehicle. It can trigger general buckling of a larger
structure because of a redistribution of loads; it can also affect the response to the
structure sufficiently to cause failure from excessive displacement or fatigue or
aeroelastic phenomena.
This monograph presents criteria and recommends practices for determining the
buckling and crippling strengths of structural plates under various types of static
loading, both mechanical and thermal. The document is concerned primarily with flat
plates, but is also applicable to plates with shallow curvature. It explicitly treats the
buckling and crippling of plates of unstiffened, corrugated, stringer-stiffened, waffle-
stiffened, sandwich, and fiber-reinforced composite construction, but it does not treat
beam-column effects, which are considered to be a stress-analysis problem.