Static Analysis of Thin Plates: Bare and Stiffened

Abstract

Plates are being widely used for many structural applications such as aerospace, civil, electronic devices and marine industries etc. For these applications, it is important to know the plate behaviour under static loading condition. The present study focuses on filling the existing gap in the literature in order to know the plate behaviour of different geometrical shapes before and after adding the stiffener. A total of eight geometries namely circular, square, rectangular (with aspect ratio of 1.25, 1.50 and 1.75) and skew square (with 70o, 76.67o and 83.33o skew angles) were considered. Static analysis of considered geometries was carried out by using FEAST (a Finite Element software). To enable comparison of plates, three parameters namely the area of plates, starting point of the stiffener and curvature of the stiffener were kept constant. From the static analysis results, the effect of the curvilinear stiffener on different geometrical shapes, effect of aspect ratio on rectangular plates and effect of skew angle on skew square plates were given. The displacement of plates reduced significantly after adding the curvilinear stiffener to the bare plates and the stiffener was most effective in the case of circular plate. In the present study, the effect of aspect ratio and skew angle on static behaviour of bare and stiffened plates was also studied and discussed.