Inelastic Buckling Strength of Unsymmetrical Tapered Plates

Abstract

A comprehensive nonlinear investigation is conducted on tapered plates having unsymmetrical geometry and subjected to five different in-plane compressive loads with the objective of reaching at simple design guidelines. The analyses considered both material and geometrical nonlinear behavior as well as post buckling of thin plates. Simply supported and clamped boundary conditions are considered herein to represent the upper and the lower bounds of most practical situations of tapered web plates in steel girders. The study covers plates with different tapering ratios as compared with the rectangular plate. All plates are assumed having initial imperfection. The study indicates that buckling strength of a tapered plate is significantly different from that of a rectangular plate for all slenderness ratios. The strength of a tapered plate with tapering ratio of 0.50 is found to be more than 50 percent less than that of a rectangular plate in most studied cases of loading. Moreover, the study shows that reversing the direction of the in-plane linearly varying compressive stress dramatically affects the buckling strength of the tapered plate.

Keywords

steel web plate unsymmetrical tapered buckling nonlinear critical strength

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