Experiment Study of Critical Dynamic Loads for Stiffened Panels Under Axial Impact

Abstract In an actual seagoing environment, marine structures typically suffer from impact load actions such as bow slamming, ship-ice interactions, and ship-ship collisions. At extreme impact loads, dynamical buckling occurs in the stiffened panels, which is different from the buckling failure in static conditions. It is necessary to investigate the dynamical buckling criteria and failure modes by using experimental methods. In this paper, two sets of marine stiffened panels are designed to separately represent the first buckling on the plating and the stiffener web. Five models are fabricated for each stiffened panel. A drop hammer platform is used and an axial impact load with a series of initial velocities for the hammer is applied at the end of the stiffened panel. The dynamic buckling state is obtained based on the measurement of impact load and the panel deformation. Then, a new evaluation criterion is proposed to predict the critical load for dynamic buckling of the stiffened panels. The predicted critical state is consistent with the changing state of the failure mode for the stiffened panels. The conclusions can be used as a guide for the dynamic buckling evaluation in ship design.