INFLUENCE OF CONTINUITY AND ASPECT-RATIO ON THE BUCKLING OF SKEW PLATES AND PLATE ASSEMBLIES

New buckling interaction results are presented for skew plates and pri smatic assemblies of plates, which illustrate the influence of continu ity over supports for a range of aspect-ratio and loading combinations . The work follows from initial comparisons (York and Williams, 1995, Buckling analysis of skew plate assemblies: classical plate theory res ults incorporating Lagrangian multipliers. Comput. Struct. 56, 625-635 ) with those in the literature for isolated plates and stiffened bench mark panels, consisting of prismatic assemblies of plates. The analysi s method, which is an enhancement to the existing computer program VIC ONOPT, is based on an ''exact'' analytical solution using Classical Pl ate Theory. This accounts for an infinitely long prismatic plate assem bly supported at regular intervals over supports with general skew ang le a, forming a series of skew plates or plate assemblies joined end t o end. This modelling can be described as exhibiting uni-axial continu ity. The enhancement relates to a recent modification of the recurrenc e equations, which now accounts for infinitely wide skew plate assembl ies supported at regular transverse intervals. This modelling possesse s bi-axial continuity. Crown copyright (C) 1996 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.