Buckling and spanning capacity of cantilevered vertical plates under body forces

This work is concerned with the elastic buckling of cantilevered, vertical, rectangular plates under body forces. In solving this buckling problem, the Ritz method is first used to determine the in-plane stress distributions that are needed to evaluate the potential energy of the body forces. The next step again uses the Ritz method for the buckling analysis. Buckling factors, hitherto not available for the aforementioned plate problem, are presented. The results can be used to shed light on the maximum spanning capacity of cantilevered standing plates under body forces.