Comprehensive investigation of buckling behavior of plates considering effects of holes

A comprehensive study was provided to investigate the buckling behavior of the steel plates with and without through-thickness holes subjected to uniaxial compression using ABAQUS. The method was validated by the results reported in the literature. Using the critical stresses, the buckling coefficients (K_c) were calculated. The effects of inclusion of material nonlinearity, plate thickness (t), aspect ratio (AR), and initial imperfection on buckling resistance of the plate was studied. Besides, the effects of having the hole in the plate were also studied. The diameter of the hole was normalized by dividing by plate breadth and was given in the form of a. Results showed that perforating one hole in the center of a plate increases the plate buckling resistance while the having two holes resulted in a decrease in the plate buckling resistance. The effects of hole eccentricity (Ecc) on the buckling resistance of the plate was studied. The position of the hole center was normalized by half of the plate breadth and length in X- and Y-directions, respectively. In this study, four cases of boundary conditions were considered, and the corresponding buckling behavior were studied combined with plate aspect ratio. It was observed that the boundary condition of the case I resulted in the highest buckling resistance. Finally, a comparison was made between the buckling behavior of the uniaxially and biaxially loaded plate. It was revealed that the buckling resistance of a biaxially loaded plate is lower half than half of that of the uniaxially loaded plate.