Critical Shear Buckling Load of Tapered Plate with Circular Opening

The elastic shear buckling behavior of tapered plates with circular opening under shear stress has been studied numerically. Also, different aspect ratios and tapering ratios are studied numerically. Several values of circular opening diameters are considered in this study. In addition, tapered plates without openings are studied numerically for the different aspect ratios and tapering ratios to obtain the critical shear buckling under pure shear stresses. The boundary conditions of the studied plates are considered to be simply supported. The finite element method by ANSYS software is performed to simulate the behavior of the tapered plate. Results obtained from the elastic buckling analysis show that the small opening diameter has no significant effect on the critical shear loads. While the variation of tapering ratios give a minor effect on the critical shear load ratios, this is for large aspect ratios. In addition, the critical shear load ratios increase when the tapering ratios increase. Based on the results, proposed expressions for calculating the critical shear loads are presented for the tapered plates with and without openings. The proposed expressions show a good agreement with the results obtained from the elastic buckling analysis and are on the conservative side when compared with the numerical results.