Unilateral contact buckling of lightly profiled skin sheets under compressive or shearing loads

Thin, profiled steel sheets forming the skin of concrete-filled composite wall panels and similar members benefit from the unilateral (tensionless) restraint provided by fill of sufficient elastic modulus. This paper investigates the buckling of such skin sheets in panels subjected to compressive or shearing loads. The profiled skins are modelled as infinite, thin orthotropic plates resting on tensionless rigid foundations, allowing the local buckling response to be simulated by the single-wave buckling mode of an unrestrained plate section of appropriate aspect ratio. Solution of the governing differential equations leads to the determination of the plate buckling coefficients. Simplified formulas for the buckling coefficients in terms of the parameters describing the skin sheets are developed and shown to agree well with published results and finite element analyses for particular limiting cases.