A study into optimization of stiffeners in plates subjected to shear loading

摘要

A great deal of attention has been focused on plates subjected to shear loading over the past decades. One main fact in design of such elements, which fall in the category of thin-walled structures, is their buckling behavior. Plate girders and recently shear walls are being widely used by structural engineers, as well as ship and aircraft designers. The role of stiffeners is proved to be vital in design of such structures to minimize their weight and cost. In this work, by using ANSYS finite element method of analysis, some 1200 plates are analyzed in order to study the role of stiffeners and to come up with some limits for an optimized design procedure. This eigenvalue method of analysis is first validated with the theoretical calculations and known cases for a wide range of typical panel geometries. The results show that the number of panels produced by intermediate transverse stiffeners should not be less than the value of plate's aspect ratio. In other words, the transverse stiffeners should divide the length of the plate to portions equal or less than its width. It is also shown that the optimum geometric properties of the stiffeners correspond to the point when the buckling shape of a plate changes from the overall mode to local mode. Furthermore, all stiffened plates, with a similar aspect ratio and number of stiffeners, have a specific value of EI_s/aD, for which the critical shear stress is optimal. In addition, some expressions to predict these properties are presented.