Abstract

The present work performs mechanical buckling analyses on square and rectangular plates with central cutouts under uniaxial compressive load. The cutouts were either circular or square holes. The material of plates was the widely used in aircraft structures i.e. Al-2024 T3 aluminum alloy. The finite element structure analysis technique was used to study the effects of plate support conditions, plate aspect ratio , hole geometry, and hole shape on the buckling characteristics of the perforated plates. The well- known finite element structural ANSYS program was used to perform the calculations. Square plates with circular and square cutouts showed decays in buckling strengths as the hole sizes were increased. On the other hand , rectangular plates unexpectedly exhibited an anomalous behavior when their buckling strengths enhanced as the holes were enlarged. The plate buckling mode shape could be symmetrical or anti-symmetrical, depending on the plate boundary conditions, aspect ratio and the hole size. For the same cutouts areas, the buckling strengths of the same sized plates with square holes,