A new composite plate/plate element for stiffened plate structures via absolute nodal coordinate formulation

Abstract

Two-dimensional plate/beam composite element is an effective method for deformation modeling of large thin-walled structure with stiffeners. However, the interface discontinuity is caused by the different stiffness of plate and beam structures, especially in the case of warping and torsional deformation, which reduces the calculation accuracy. In this paper, a composite plate/plate element model is proposed to describe the deformation of the stiffened plate structures. The plate element is developed via the absolute nodal coordinate formulation (ANCF) method and the slope of position is used to describe the rotation deformation, which releases the assumption of infinitesimal rotation in traditional shell element and may describe the large deformation problem. The consistent deformation conditions at contact interface between the plate and stiffener structures are deduced. Then, the mass, stiffness and generalized external force matrices of new plate/plate element are deduced. The static and dynamic analyses of the stiffened plate are conducted to verify the applicability of the new composite element, in which the cross-section size and the number of stiffeners are considered. The results show that the new plate/plate element may describe the mechanical behavior of stiffened plate structures and has a higher calculation accuracy than the common plate/beam elements.