Elastic stability of bi-axially loaded rectangular plates with a single circular hole

The finite-element method has been employed to determine the elastic buckling stresses of a bi-axially loaded perforated rectangular plate with dimensions a and b in the x- and y-directions, respectively. The considered perforation is a single circular hole whose center is located along the longitudinal axis of the plate. The considered plate has simply supported edges in the out-of-plane direction and is subjected to bi-axial uniformly distributed end loads (compressive load σx in the x-direction, and compressive or tensile load σy in the y-direction). Parameters considered in the study are the plate's aspect ratio a/b, the stress ratio ξ between the applied stresses in the y- and x-directions (ξ=σy/σx), the circular hole size d and location ex.The study shows that, in most of the considered cases, the bigger the hole size d, the lesser the plate stability and the lesser the buckling stresses. It also shows that the plate aspect ratios, a/b, between 0.6 and 1.2 should be avoided for plates with large holes and negative ξ, due to the large reduction in the buckling stresses. The hole location should also be selected to be away from the loaded edge of the plate as much as possible (better to have ex/b>1.0) to increase the buckling stresses and improve stability. The study demonstrates also that the increase in tension in the y-direction in bi-axially loaded plate with large hole (d/b>0.4) reduces its stability. This is in contrary to the expected increase in the stability due to the increase in tension which can be seen clearly in the cases of solid plates and plates with small holes.