Buckling analysis of Levy-type orthotropic stiffened plate and shell based on different strain-displacement models

In the present work a model able to predict the buckling behavior of thin, orthotropic, stiffened plates and shells subject to axial compression is proposed. In the context of the Kirchhoff-Love plate theory and making use of different strain-displacement models - namely the von Kármán model, the Koiter-Sanders shell model, an Enhanced von Kármán model and a spurious model commonly adopted in literature - the equilibrium equations have been solved by the Levy-type approach. The results obtained highlight the influence of each non linear strain-displacement term and show that the von Kármán model can noticeably overestimate the buckling load when the critical mode involves significant in-plane displacements.