INSTABILITY OF AXIALLY COMPRESSED CCCC THIN RECTANGULAR PLATE USING TAYLOR-MCLAURIN’S SERIES SHAPE FUNCTION ON RITZ METHOD

Compared with conventional structural plates, the pronounced role of instability complicates the behaviour of thin-walled plates. In this study, the stability of in-plane loaded CCCC thin-walled rectangular plate was investigated. The study involved a theoretical formulation based on Taylor-McLaurin series as shape function and implemented through application to Ritz method. In deriving the shape function, Taylor-McLaurin series was truncated at the fifth term, which satisfied the boundary conditions of the plate and resulted to a particular shape function for CCCC plate. The shape function was then substituted into the total potential energy functional, which was subsequently minimized to get the stability equations. Derived Eigen-value solver was used to solve the stability equation for CCCC plates various aspect ratios to get the buckling loads. The buckling loads from this study were compared with those of earlier researchers and the average percentage difference recorded for CCCC plate was 3.54%. This difference shows that the shape function derived from Taylor-McLaurin series has rapid convergence and is a very good approximation of exact displacement function of the deformed thin-walled rectangular plate under in-plane loading.