Post-buckling of elastic annular plates at multiple eigenvalues

The buckling and post-buckling problem of elastic annular plates is treated at multiple eigenvalues making strong use of symmetry properties of the problem in deriving bifurcation equations (amplitude equations of the critical modes) from the von Karman plate equations by means of the Ljapunov-Schmidt method. Further, a restricted generic unfolding of the bifurcation equations is made and some practically interesting results concerning the post-buckling behaviour are presented.