In this paper, a novel local surface nanocrystallization treatment is introduced to design the anti-buckling rectangular plate. The mechanical properties and critical buckling loads of the plates are greatly improved by the surface nanocrystallization technology. Several local nanocrystallization layouts, including the horizonal stripes distribution, the vertical stripes distribution and the spaced latticed blocks distribution, are designed and numerical simulations are carried out to evaluate the stability of the plates. Results show that the critical buckling load was significantly improved by the local nanocrystallization treatment. Among all the designs, the critical buckling loads for the vertical nanocrystallization layouts is the optimal one. And the technology can also be extended to the anti-buckling design of other structures.

A novel surface modification method, namely the surface nanocrystallization technology, is introduced to enhance the anti–buckling performance of the metal cylindrical shells under axial impact loading. The effects of local nanocrystallization layouts are explored by evaluating the critical buckling loads of four local nanocrystallization layouts including the local circumferential stripes (LCS), local axial stripes (LAS), spaced latticed blocks (SLB) and oblique latticed blocks (OLB). Numercial results show that, compared to the untreated cylindrical shells, the critical buckling loads of the local nanocrystallized ones are significantly improved by the local nanocrystallization treatment. The critical buckling loads for the LAS design is improved by 80%. It is concluded that the local nanocrystallization treatment is a very promising method to design and manufacture the metal cylindrical shells with high anti-buckling performance.