Applicability Evidence of Constructal Design in Structural Engineering: Case Study of Biaxial Elasto-Plastic Buckling of Square Steel Plates with Elliptical Cutout

Abstract

The application of the Constructal Design method in Heat Transfer and Fluid Mechanics areas is an already consecrated approach to geometrically evaluate these flow engineering systems. However, this approach in Mechanics of Materials realm is not yet widely used, since one can find only few publications about it in literature. The Constructal Design is based on the Constructal Law, a physical law that explains the universal phenomenon of evolution of any finite size flow system. Therefore, the main goal here is to show that the Constructal Design can also be used in dedicated Structural Engineering problems as an effective method for geometric evaluation. The obtained results prove the Constructal Design applicability definitively in Mechanics of Materials.