Buckling of Tapered Rectangular Plates in Compression

Abstract

SummaryThe problem considered is the buckling of a rectangular plate, tapered in thickness in a direction parallel to two sides, and uniformly compressed in that direction. Curves are presented showing the variation of buckling stress coefficient with the side ratio and the amount of taper, for each of two types of thickness variation, namely exponential and linear, and for each of two sets of boundary conditions, namely all edges simply-supported, and ends clamped and sides simply-supported. It is shown that, unlike the case of a uniform plate, there are no discontinuous changes of buckling mode.