BUCKLING OF CIRCULAR, ANNULAR PLATES OF NONUNIFORM THICKNESS

This paper deals with the solution of the title problem in the case wh ere the outer boundary is subjected to uniform, hydrostatic pressure w hile the inner edge of the plate is free. II is assumed that the plate thickness varies (a) in a discontinuous fashion and (b) linearly. An approximate approach is proposed using polynomial coordinate functions which identically satisfy the boundary conditions at the outer edge, only. The eigenvalues are determined using the optimized Rayleigh-Ritz method and good engineering agreement is shown to exist with buckling parameters obtained by means of a finite element code. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd