The mechanical properties of fiber reinforced plastic materials produced by pultrusion process are usually considered as an otrhotropic. Due to the attractive material properties, this material is regarded as an alternative of conventional constructio...
The mechanical properties of fiber reinforced plastic materials produced by pultrusion process are usually considered as an otrhotropic. Due to the attractive material properties, this material is regarded as an alternative of conventional construction materials. But the research on analysis and design for the orthotropic structural member is not enough to set up the design criteria. It is the reason why it is not used versatilely in construction field. In this research, local buckling analysis of orthotropic compression members is performed using equilibrium approach with the assumptions relating to the common edges of plate components. In the compression members, boundary conditions of common edges change due to elastic constraining effect of adjacent plates with various ratios of width to thickness. To perform local buckling analysis of structural members, buckling analysis of a plate having boundary conditions which is restrained by adjacent plates is performed. For an orthotropic plate the loaded edges are considered to be simply-supported and the side edges are assumed to have arbitrary boundary conditions. Local buckling analysis is performed by the closed-form approach and energy approach which is more convenient and easier than the closed-form approach. Approximate solution similar to energy solution but giving exact result like that of a closed-form solution is also suggested. The minimum buckling coefficients with respect to the ratio of width to thickness for the rectangular box, channel and zee section columns are shown graphically. Using the approximate buckling equation, the dominant plate component for the local buckling of the structural shapes is also investigated and the result is plotted on the curve mentioned above. Simple verification of the equation derived is performed by changing the orthotropic mechanical properties to isotropic ones and it is observed that the result is identical with that in published document.