Experimental determination of the buckling load of rectangular plates using vibration correlation technique

This study investigates the use of a vibration correlation technique (VCT) to identify the buckling load of a rectangular thin plate. It is proposed that the buckling load can be determined experimentally using the natural frequencies of plates under tensile loading. A set of rectangular plates was tested for natural frequencies using an impact test method. Aluminum and stainless steel specimens with CCCC, CCCF and CFCF boundary conditions were included in the experiment. The measured buckling load was determined from the plot of the square of a measured natural frequency versus an in-plane load. The buckling loads from the measured vibration data match the numerical solutions very well. For specimens with well-defined boundary conditions, the average percentage difference between buckling loads from VCT and numerical solutions is -0.18% with a standard deviation of 5.05%. The proposed technique using vibration data in the tensile loading region has proven to be an accurate and reliable method which might be used to identify the buckling load of plates. Unlike other static methods, this correlation approach does not require drawing lines in the pre-buckling and post-buckling regions; thus, bias in data interpretation is avoided.