Hi,

Anyone got any ideas/solutions for the design of plates in shear. Some of my design rely on stiffened plate walls, where the wind load is transmitted through the plate in shear, ie parallel to the plate.

I guess what I am after is the bucking capacity of the plate in this instance, or possibly the tensile capacity. Presently for the analysis we utilise dummy members that mimic the capacity of the plate, but need a more accurate solution, and its beyond me.

Any help would be appreciate.

Regards,

Gary

Luckily for you I have been doing some buckling calculations this week and your post prompted me to upload and add a shear load case. I hope it solves your problem. It is well worth picking up a copy of the calculation reference.
Flat plate buckling.xls
You'll need the xlxtra addin for the calculation to work.
XlXtrFun™ Extra Functions for Microsoft Excel

Thanks for your help John. The example you supplied is not exactly what I am after, but its a start. Hopefully I will be able to go on and edit accordingly to suit my needs.

My problem has the plate fixed on all sides, well welded to stiffeners anyway, and a load only applied to one corner. This then uses the tension field of the plate to distribute the load, the compression zone is deemed to be not there. If I get anywhere with this I'll upload it in the future.

Of course if there is anyone who can offer some help, I'd be more than happy to accept it. In the meantime, back to scouring the web for info.

Gary