Local buckling load of a perforated plate – a computational study

Journal article

The webs of thin-walled beams and columns can be perforated for aesthetic, maintenance or structural purposes, affecting the elastic buckling behaviour when subject to compression. When conservatively approximated as a simply-supported plate, the web may exhibit one of four local buckling modes. These modes may interact, akin to the interaction of global, distortional and local buckling observed in thin-walled columns. Accounting for this, five subsets of buckling deformation are defined and used to develop an algorithm, which determines the corresponding buckling mode depending on geometrical limits. These modes are Whole Plate Buckling (WPB), Unstiffened Strip Buckling (USB), Euler Strip Buckling (ESB), Lateral Perforation Buckling (LPB), or an interaction of these (INT). For each mode, a predicting equation for the critical elastic buckling load is proposed and compared to the critical elastic buckling load determined with the Finite Element Method (FEM). The mean ratio of the elastic buckling load for a perforated plate found with FEM to that predicted with the proposed formulae is 1.00 for 775 models, with an overall R2 coefficient of 0.840. Finally, a reliability assessment determines a statistical model factor γ for a 95 % confidence interval. This factor is found for each local buckling mode, and proposed as 1.17 for all plates with any number of perforations, not exhibiting LPB.

Authors: Naraidoo, E; Rossi, B

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Journal: Thin-Walled Structures
• Volume: 215
• Article number: 113445
• Publication date: 2025-05-21
• Acceptance date: 2025-05-12
• DOI: 10.1016/j.tws.2025.113445
• EISSN: 1879-3223
• ISSN: 0263-8231
• Language: English
• Keywords: predicting equations; buckling; perforations