Buckling sensitivity analysis of cracked thin plates under membrane tension or compression loading

Thin-walled structural components such as plates and shells are commonly used in practical applications such as aerospace, naval, nuclear power plant, pressure vessels, mechanical and civil engineering structures and so on, and the safety assessment of such structures must carefully consider all the phenomena which can decrease the bearing capacity of such elements. Among them, the presence of cracks in thin-walled structures can heavily affects their safety factor with respect to the more common modes of failure such as buckling or fracture. For very thin plate, buckling collapse under compression or even under tension, apart fracture or plastic failure in this last case, can easily take place: the presence of flaws such as through-the-thickness cracks can sensibly modify such ultimate loads. In the paper the effects of cracks’ length and orientation on the buckling loads of rectangular elastic thin-plates – characterised by different boundary conditions and by various Poisson’s ratio – under tension and compression, is considered. For tensioned flawed plates a fracture-buckling and a plastic-buckling collapse maps are obtained. After a short explanation of the buckling phenomena in plates, several FE numerical parametric analyses results are presented in terms of critical load multiplier in compression or in tension in cracked plates. The obtained results are discussed and some interesting and useful conclusions regarding the sensitivity to cracks’ presence of buckling loads of thin plates under compression or tension (or fracture in this last case) are explained. The interesting case of tensioned cracked plates is considered by studying the easiest collapse between fracture, plastic flow and buckling: in such cases some failure-type maps are finally determined.