Assessment of the ultimate strength of stiffened panels of ships considering uncertainties in geometrical aspects: Finite element approach and simplified formula

The development of reliability-based assessments has improved the safety design of ship structures by considering the stochastic behaviour of structural components such as stiffened panels. However, previous studies generally considered the variation in the initial geometric imperfection of a stiffened panel as a single deterministic value. To enhance the analysis, in this study, a series of ultimate strength analyses of stiffened panels were carried out by varying and combining the stiffened panel parameters, including variations in the initial geometric imperfection (2.5%, 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% of the maximum value), modes of the imperfection (column, local, and torsional imperfection modes), slenderness ratios (plate and web slenderness), and span-tobay ratios (3 and 6). A total of 750 stiffened panel configurations were investigated through a nonlinear finite element method (FEM) analysis using ANSYS APDL incorporated with a code in MATLAB to model the imperfections based on idealised models. The obtained ultimate strength values were then formulated using a nonlinear correlation between the variables in the regression method to yield a new formula for predicting the ultimate strength of the stiffened panel. The results showed that combining the varied parameter values significantly affected the ultimate strength of the stiffened panel and collapse modes. The newly derived formula provided good accuracy with a standard error of only 2.08% when compared with the FEM results of stiffened panels having a significant disparity with the configuration of the idealised models. This confirms the validity of the formula as a reference for evaluating the ultimate strength value with the influence of an initial geometric imperfection.