LINEAR BUCKLING ANALYSIS OF CRACKED ISOTROPIC PLATES USING THE EXTENDED FINITE ELEMENT METHOD

The behaviour of plate structures under compressive loads has been of great concern for engineering applications, especially in aeronautical and aerospace structures in which the demanding design of weight critical applications usually leads to stability problems. In this paper, the linear buckling problem of cracked isotropic plates is studied using the extended finite element method (XFEM). The mixed interpolation technique of the well-established MITC4 quadrilateral finite element with 12 standard degrees of freedom per element is used. The critical buckling load and mode shapes of simply supported square plates are computed as a function of crack length.