Local Buckling of Long-Span Folded Plates

An approximate analysis of a long end-supported folded plate structure with or without transverse stiffeners to predict the load at which a local buckle will appear in one or more of its constituent elements is presented. Based on the observations of numerous experiments of folded plate models subjected to load levels of sufficient intensity to create buckling in a plate element, the local buckle is assumed to be a rectangular or skewed panel which is a portion of a multi-waved buckled surface. This panel, which is subjected to in-plane normal and shearing forces, is analyzed using the energy approach. This approach makes use of stress functions which may be obtained from any of the available general methods of folded plate stress analysis and yields a closed-form solution for the load associated with the local buckle. Comparisons with previous analyses and experimental results are also presented.