Global properties of buckled states of plates that can suffer thickness changes (Q912686)

This paper is an extension of the work of the author on global buckling properties of nonlinearly elastic rods [e.g.: ibid. 84, 293-305 (1984; Zbl 0533.73042)] to the axisymmetric buckling of circular plates. Making use of the Cosserat theory the plates can suffer not only flexure, midplane extension and shear but also thickness changes. In addition the material of the plate is described by a very general system of nonlinear constitutive equations for elastic materials. The main result of the paper is the presentation of global bifurcation properties by determining the nodal properties of the solutions, which distinguish the branches globally.