Contributed by the Applied Mechanics Division of THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERS for publication in the ASME JOURNAL OF APPLIED MECHANICS. Manuscript received by the ASME Applied Mechanics Division, November 26, 2002, final revision, May 10, 2004. Associate Editor: N. Triantafyllidis.
The stability problem of plates has been of considerable importance in engineering. For the case of a thin circular plate described by the von Ka´rma´n nonlinear plate theory stability, analysis is given by Wolkowisky 1. The stability of a clamped annular plate also described by the von Ka´rma´n nonlinear plate theory is presented by Machinek and Troger 2, where the Liapunov-Schmidt method is used. For the case of a moderately thick circular plate stability, analysis is given by Raju and Rao 3.
Many papers investigated the influence of temperature on the stability and the stress distribution of the plate. Pal 4 has examined the...
