Buckling analysis of Reissner-Mindlin plates subjected to in-plane edge loads using a shear-locking-free and meshfree method

Buckling study of plates subjected to uniformly uniaxial, biaxial in-plane compression and pure shear loads using an efficient novel meshfree method is presented in this paper. The moving Kriging (MK) interpolation technique satisfying the Kronecker delta function property is employed to construct the shape functions. To allow for the effect of transverse shear deformation on thick plates, the first-order Reissner-Mindlin plate theory (FSDT) is adopted. The new formulation enables us to eliminate shear-locking demonstrated by various numerical examples involving both thin and moderately thick plates. It is found that the results achieved by the present approach match well with those obtained by other existing numerical approaches and analytical solutions, which illustrates the applicability, the effectiveness and the accuracy of the method. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.