Study on Shear Postbuckling and Failure of Perforated Plates: Modeling and Experiments

Based on the Kirchhoff-Karman nonlinear theory, the postbuckling bearing capacity (PBC) of perforated plates under shearing load was studied and compared using a self-developed quasi-conforming element program with singular point identification and switching approach. The influences of geometric parameters on the PBC were analyzed. During calculation, the edge beams were introduced to simulate effects of boundary on PBC. The perforated plates were manufactured and tested to verify the accuracy of the numerical results. The results show that the influence of in-plane constraints along the normal of edges on the PBC is more significant. The PBC increases with the increase of plate thickness but is not sensitive to the change of the hole's location. The reinforcement can reduce the stress concentration and increase the PBC by 7-133%. The PBC is greatly affected by the aperture D, and it is found that the optimal aperture D* exists when the side length a is constant. The PBC under the optimal aperture is higher than that under other apertures. To facilitate the optimization design, a more refined geometric parameter library is provided by the least-squares method combined with the linear interpolation method. The interpolation results are verified by the existing numerical results.