An Alternative Approach to the Interaction between Local and Overall Buckling in Stiffened Panels

Abstract

The present analysis deals with stiffened panels in which plate buckling, possibly involving torsion of the stiffeners, dominates the local buckling mode. Previous work on the post-buckling behaviour of long flat plates is employed to write reasonably simple and still sufficiently accurate expressions for the displacements in the initial post-buckling range. The concept of slowly varying functions is employed in the derivation of a relatively simple approximate energy expression governing combined local and overall buckling of the panel. In addition to the ratio of the critical stresses for overall and local buckling λE = σE/σloc energy expression depends essentially on only one additional nondimensional parameter. Moreover, the latter parameter depends only on properties of the cross-section, and it does not appear to vary widely for the cross-sections likely to be encountered in practice.