Numerical and experimental investigations on the compression behaviour of stiffened plates

The main objective of this paper is to present the results of the finite element method for non-linear analysis of stiffened plates subjected to axial compression load considering post-buckling behaviour up to collapse. For this purpose two series of well executed experimental data on longitudinally stiffened steel plates with and without transversal stiffeners subjected to uniform axial in-plane load carried out to study the buckling and post-buckling up to final failure have been chosen. The first series are those of Ghavami where the influences of stiffener cross-section of the type rectangular (R), L and T, their spacing and the presence of rigid transversal stiffeners have been studied. The second series of Tanaka & Endo, where the behaviour of stiffened plates having three and two flat bars for longitudinal and transversal stiffeners respectively were analysed. For the purpose a well-established commercially available Finite Element program ANSYS has been chosen. The selected element was SHELL43, which can trace the full-range, elastic-plastic behaviour of the stiffened plates. It is seen that the simulated results of FEM are in good consistency with the test results. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.