Buckling of triangular Mindlin plates under isotropic inplane compression

This paper considers the elastic buckling of triangular Mindlin plates under isotropic inplane compression. The total potential energy functional for the considered buckling problem is derived and the newly developed pb-2 Rayleigh-Ritz method is applied for the analysis. The method features the pb-2 Ritz function defined by the product of a two-dimensional polynomial function (p-2) and a basic function (b) formed from taking the product of the boundary equations with each equation raised to appropriate powers. New buckling results for isosceles and right-angled triangular Mindlin plates with various apex angles, thickness to width ratios and different combinations of edge conditions are presented. Such tabulated results are not only valuable to designers but also important to researchers as reference values for validating their numerical techniques and software packages. © 1994 Springer-Verlag.