5. Conclusion
In this paper, using the Rayleigh–Ritz method, the buckling load of a simply supported rectangular plate under biaxial and shear loads was evaluated. The plate aspect ratio was supposed that varies from 1 to 5 and with several loading states, 15 129 examples were considered. Then, applying the regression techniques and interpolation on the obtained data, a concise equation (Eq. (19) or (23)) is approximated to predict the buckling load coefficient. It can be shown that for longer plates (α > 5), the obtained results for α = 5 are applicable with a good accuracy. In Compression–Compression–Shear state, the maximum error in the proposed equation increases when the aspect ratio rises. However, it is always less than 8% (3 ≤ α ≤ 5). In presence of tensile stress(es), right hand of the proposed equation must be always considered unit. When the tensile stress (σy) is applied on the plate length (the longer direction) and the compressive stress, σx ≤ 1.4τ , then a modifier factor (η1) must be applied on the results. Furthermore, if the tensile stress (σx) is applied on the plate width and its value is larger than 40% of the shear stress and also σy ≤ τ , then another modifier factor (η2) must be used. The predicted results by the proposed equation lead to error up to 20% in some states. The proposed equation is directly applicable for Tension– Tension–Shear state, when both of tensile stresses values are less than 40% of the shear stress; otherwise, the modifier factor, η1 should be used to decrease errors. However, the maximum appeared error reaches to 16%. Finally, the achieved results from two methods were compared with those of FEM; thus the maximum difference between the Rayleigh–Ritz method and FEM is about 1.4%.