The elastic behaviour of multi-stiffened plates under uniform compression

Abstract

The paper investigates the elastic behaviour of multi-stiffened plates under uniform compression. An energy formulation is first presented, in which the structure is idealized as assembled plate and beam elements and rigidity connected at their junctions. The strain energy components for the plate and the stiffener elements are then derived in terms of the out and in-plane displacement functions. Sequential Quadratic Programming (SQP) technique is then used to determine the critical buckling load for given plate% stiffener geometric properties. Results are then presented showing the transition from the overall to local mode by increasing the stiffener depth for various concentric and eccentric stiffening configurations. Finally, a design example is presented to compare the efficiency of various stiffening configurations.