• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.102-113
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• 2017

A new index for the buckling strength of non-structured plates is proposed. The external work or the deformation energy caused by the external loads or the boundary displacement controled by a load parameter is calculated along an equilibrium path of the member under consideration. If the second variation of the energy with respect to the parameter loses its positiveness, it defined as the limit of the stability. In contrast to the current method given in codes where the stability limit is evaluated by using only representative internal forces, the evaluation of the stability limit is always consistent even with the change of the distribution of the internal forces on the boundary. If the elasticity is concerned, the result from this proposed approach becomes identical to that from the classical methods.