Stability, Free Vibration, and Bending Behavior of Multistiffened Plates

Abstract

This paper investigates the static and dynamic behavior of stiffened plates. As a first stage, a new method of analysis is presented. The structure is idealized as assembled plate and stiffener elements rigidly connected at their junctions. The strain energy of the system is then expressed in terms of generalized inand out-of-plane displacement functions. The resulting nonlinear strain energy function of the assembled structure is then transformed into an unconstrained optimization problem, and sequential quadratic programming (SQP) is used to determine the magnitudes of buckling load; the natural frequency and the associated mode shapes for plate buckling and dynamic analysis, respectively; and the maximum deflection for plate bending problems. Verifications of numerical procedure with other methods are also presented. Finally, using the described algorithm, results are presented showing the variation of the plate/stiffener geometric parameters for various concentric and eccentric stiffening configurations.