Constructal Design and computational modeling applied to the biaxial elasto-plastic buckling of plates with two elliptical perforations

Abstract

This study used computational modeling to perform a geometric evaluation based on the Constructal Design method regarding steel plates with two elliptical perforations subjected to biaxial elasto-plastic buckling. Keeping constant the material volume of the perforated plates, the worst and best results between plates with one and two perforations were compared. For this purpose, a rectangular reference plate without perforations was adopted, from which a portion of material was removed by inserting elliptical perforations. The  parameter, which represents the ratio between the perforations volume and the reference plate material volume, was adopted with a value of  = 0.15. Each plate with two perforations was submitted to biaxial compressive loads, and then the influence that the relation of the perforations dimensions has on the normalized ultimate buckling stress was evaluated. The results showed that the best geometric configuration, among the geometries analyzed with two perforations, is the one with a perforation side ratio equal to 0.6, leading to a 24.9% increase in the ultimate buckling stress and better stress distribution, when compared to the geometry with perforation side ratio equal to 1.0, which conducted to the worst results among all evaluated cases.