Buckling analysis of elastically-restrained steel plates under eccentric compression

In this research, the explicit closed-form local buckling solution of steel plates in contact with concrete, with both loaded and unloaded edges elastically restrained against rotation and subjected to eccentric compression is presented. The Rayleigh-Rize approach is applied to establish the eigenvalue problem for the local buckling performance. Buckling shape which combines trigonometric and biquadratic functions is introduced according to that used by Qin <i>et al</i>. (2017) on steel plate buckling under uniform compression. Explicit solutions for predicting the local buckling stress of steel plate are obtained in terms of the rotational stiffness. Based on different boundary conditions, simply yet explicit local buckling solutions are discussed in details. The proposed formulas are validated against previous research and finite element results. The influences of the loading stress gradient parameter, the aspect ratio, and the rotational stiffness on the local buckling stress resultants of steel plates with different boundary conditions were evaluated. This work can be considered as an alternative to apply a different buckling shape function to study the buckling problem of steel plate under eccentric compression comparing to the work by Qin <i>et al</i>. (2018), and the results are found to be in consistent with those in Qin <i>et al</i>. (2018).