Error estimates for the unilateral buckling load of a plate involving the membrane efforts consistency error

The paper deals with error estimates for the unilateral buckling critical load of a thin plate in presence of an obstacle. The error on the membrane efforts tensor is taken into account. First, using the Mindlin's plate model together with a finite elements scheme of degree one, an error estimate, depending on the mesh size h, is established. In order to validate this theoretical error estimate, some numerical experiments are presented. Second, using the Kirchhoff-Love's plate model, an abstract error estimate is achieved. Its drawback is that it contains a hard term to evaluate.