Development of the buckling strength estimation system for plate members considering tensile load effects

Generally, a safety estimation based on the buckling strength is carried out to evaluate the strength of plate members in the design process of ship hull structures. The design codes of classification societies do not consider the in-plane tension effects. However, in every loading conditions, many ship plate panels among enormous plate panels in a ship structure may be subjected to the in-plane tension with other loading components. Therefore, this in-plane tension effect gives the conservative value of buckling strength. Firstly, in this study, to estimate the buckling strength based on the more real loading condition a simplified plate buckling formula considering in-plane tension is obtained on the theoretical basis and this formula needs not the number of buckling half waves for evaluation. The proposed formula is compared with the existing theoretical solutions, Ueda's formula design code(LR) and the results which are obtained by numerical analysis. It has a good correlation with the present results and others. Secondly, in order to increase the evaluation efficiency, simple estimation system of the buckling strength is developed using the window management system of engineering workstation based on the above plate buckling formula. This established system layout is simply explained. From this evaluation system, more reliable buckling safety of plate panel will be guaranteed in the ship hull design stage of H.H.I. shipyard.