New analytic buckling solutions of rectangular thin plates with two free adjacent edges by the symplectic superposition method

This paper deals with a classic but very difficult type of problems, i.e., pursuing analytic buckling solutions of biaxially loaded rectangular thin plates with two free adjacent edges that are characterized by having both the free edges and a free corner. The primary challenge is to find the solutions satisfying both the governing high-order partial differential equations (PDEs) and non-Lévy-type boundary constraints. Here, an up-to-date symplectic superposition method is developed for the issues, which yields the analytic solutions by converting the problems to be solved into the superposition of two elaborated subproblems that are solved by the symplectic elasticity approach. The distinctive merit of the method is that a direct rigorous derivation helps to access the analytic solutions without any assumptions/prior knowledge of the solution forms, which is attributed to the implementation in the symplectic space-based Hamiltonian system rather than in the classic Euclidean space-based Lagrangian system. As the important outputs, comprehensive new analytic results are obtained, with 1200 critical buckling loads and 100 buckling mode shapes presented, which are all well validated by the refined finite element analysis. The rapid convergence and favorable accuracy of the present method make it competent as a benchmark one for similar problems.