Stability and vibration of an annular plate with concentrated edge load

Abstract

Buckling and free vibration of an annular plate with clamped inner boundary and a concentrated, in-plane edge load at the outer boundary are studied using the semi-analytical Finite Element Method. The annular plate elements developed by Pardoen are used for this purpose. Exact in-plane stress field is obtained for various harmonics. Geometric stiffness matrices are developed which are general and can handle any in-plane stress field once its Fourier expansion is known. Results indicate that theoretical buckling loads and frequencies of free vibration are considerably lower than the values reported in earlier analyses.