Stability of a rectangular plate under biaxial tension

The stability problem of a rectangular plate undergoing uniform biaxial in-plane tensile strain is solved using the three-dimensional equations of nonlinear elasticity. The surfaces of the plate are stress-free, and special boundary conditions that allow one to separate variables in the linearized equilibrium equations are specified on the lateral surfaces. For three particular models of incompressible materials, the critical curves are constructed and the instability region is determined in the plane of the loading parameters (the multiplicities of elongations of the plate material in the unperturbed equilibrium state). The numerical results show that for thin plates loaded by tensile stresses, the size and shape of the instability region depend only slightly on the relation among the length, width, and thickness of the plate. Based on the results obtained, a simple approximate stability criterion is proposed for an elastic plate under tensile loads.