Elastic Effect on the Final Deflection of Rigid-Plastic Square Plates under Pulse Loading

•The discrepancies of rigid-plastic predictions deviated from elastic-plastic simulation results are quantified.•The discrepancies in final deflection for square plates are compared with those for beams.•A structural stiffness, which combines material's properties and geometric parameters of plates, is defined.•The upper bounds of the discrepancy in final deflection are expressed by dimensionless parameters.