Novel quadrature element formulation for simultaneous local and global buckling analysis of eccentrically stiffened plates

Abstract

Abstract Predicting both buckling load and mode shape of eccentrically stiffened panels correctly is of important and a rather challenging task. In this paper, a novel and efficient quadrature element formulation is developed to fulfill this challenging task. A high-order quadrature plate-stiffener element is proposed by assembling quadrature beam elements to the quadrature plate element via the displacement relations. Thus, the same plate mesh scheme can be used for buckling analysis of stiffened plate with different numbers of stiffeners located at arbitrary positions. Explicit formulations and solution procedures are given. Convergence studies are performed for stiffened plates with different shapes of cross-section of stiffeners and materials. A number of case studies are given. For validations, numerical results are compared with either existing solutions or finite element data. It is demonstrated that high accuracy can be achieved with relatively small number of nodes. Presented formulation is simple, straightforward, and reliable, which can allow a quick and accurate analysis of buckling behavior of eccentrically stiffened plates.