Approximate buckling interaction curves for long anisotropic flat plates in biaxial compression and shear

Abstract The wing and tail of an aircraft typically consist of a stiffened skin, combined with ribs and spars. This arrangement divides the skin into rectangular pocket. These pockets may be designed for over a thousand different load cases so it is important to understand the interaction between load combinations in order to asses which load cases are critical. Buckling interaction curves are well known for isotropic materials but not for anisotropic materials. This paper presents approximate buckling interaction curves for anisotropic plates. A comparison between eigenvalues derived using the approximate method and finite element method is made and it is shown that both methods correlate well.