This research is concerned with the elastic buckling of curved plates subjected to longitudinal and transverse in plane loads. In this application plates may carry on longitudinal loads in additional to transverse loads. Since closed form solution for buckling analysis of plates with different end conditions and subjected to longitudinal and transverse loads is complicated, numerical methods are more useful. Different types of finite strip method are: Classical Strip Method, Complex Method and Spiline Finite Strip Method. In this research Classical Strip Method along with curved strip elements have been used. Each curve strip element contains four lines of nodes which also has four degree of freedom, 3 of them transitive and 1 rotational. Interpolations of nodal values have been done by Triangular Functions in longitudinal direction and hermitian functions in transverse direction. This method, because of one less degree of freedom from Finite Element method, would have a faster convergence. Coefficients of local buckling and counteraction of critical longitudinal and transverse loads on curved plates have been investigated. The results can be used in design of circular shells, thin walled pipes and many other structures containing curved plates.
