Post-buckling of moderately thick elliptical plates

The objective of this paper is to investigate the buckling and post-buckling behavior of moderately thick elliptical plates subjected to uniform edge compression. For this purpose, an eight-node isoparametric plate finite element is developed with post-buckling analysis capability. The finite element developed has 5 d.f. per node and therefore, linear, nonlinear and geometric stiffness matrices are of size 40 x 40. The results obtained from the present finite element analysis are compared with those available in the literature. Results are presented for various plate configurations. Empirical relations are developed to compute the buckling/post-buckling loads of moderately thick elliptical plates with thickness ratio-plate center deflection as the variables. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.