Numerical Study of the Effect of Geometry and Boundary Conditions on the Collapse Behaviour of Stocky Stiffened Panels

This study aims at studying different configurations of the stiffened panels in order to identify robust configurations that would not be much sensitive to the imprecision in boundary conditions that can exist in experimental set ups. A numerical study is conducted to analyze the influence of the stiffener’s geometry and boundary conditions on the ultimate strength of stiffened panels under uniaxial compression. The stiffened panels with different combinations of mechanical material properties and geometric configurations are considered. The four types of stiffened panels analysed are made of mild or high tensile steel and have bar, ‘L’ and ‘U’ stiffeners. To understand the effect of finite element modelling on the ultimate strength of the stiffened panels, four types of FE models are investigated in FE analysis including 3 bays, 1/2+1+1/2 bays, 1+1 bays and 1 bay with different boundary conditions.