Axial plastic collapse behavior of plates

In the present study, the collapse behavior of a plate subjected to axial compression is investigated parametrically using the finite element method. It is shown that the axial collapse of the plate, which has various hardening characteristics, is controlled by two dominant factors: the stress limitation of the material and the limitation of in-plane lateral deformation at the side edges of the plate. Then, a simplified collapse condition, which corresponds to two collapse types, is derived based on the effective width concept and the plastic theory, and the validity of the collapse condition is then verified by the comparison of numerical results obtained under various material and geometric properties. Furthermore, a method for predicting the collapse stress is proposed based on the present collapse condition.