Development of a unified design buckling curve for fibre reinforced polymer plates subjected to in-plane uniaxial and uniform compression

Presented are 24 non-dimensional buckling curves to estimate the strengths of Fibre-Reinforced Polymer (FRP) square plates having four simply supported edges and subjected to in-plane uniaxial and uniform in-plane compression. The curves are constructed by the authors from a parametric numerical analysis using ABAQUS (R) software with changing variables for: material properties; initial geometrical imperfections; laminate lay-ups; and plate thicknesses. These strength curves express relationships for the buckling reduction factor with plate slenderness, and account for post-buckling strength. We observe that regardless of the laminate lay-up (except for purely unidirectional), the choice of FRP material and the magnitude of the initial geometrical imperfection the predicted buckling reduction factors display a meaningful correlation with plate slenderness. Presented is a proposed unified buckling design curve, defined as the lower bound to 18 of the 24 ABAQUS (R)-generated buckling curves. This new curve is benchmarked by the authors against experimental test results extracted from the literature and it is found that there is a reasonable agreement. The authors recommend that the proposed buckling design curve has the potential to be introduced into structural design standards as a procedure to design the buckling strengths of FRP plates.

Automated summary

This article presents 24 non-dimensional buckling curves that estimate the strengths of FRP square plates with four simply supported edges under in-plane uniaxial and uniform in-plane compression. The curves are constructed through a parametric numerical analysis using ABAQUS (R) software, considering variables such as material properties, initial geometrical imperfections, laminate lay-ups, and plate thicknesses. These strength curves represent the relationship between the buckling reduction factor and plate slenderness, while accounting for post-buckling strength. The authors propose a unified buckling design curve, which is benchmarked against experimental test results and shows reasonable agreement. They recommend introducing this curve into structural design standards for FRP plates.