Initial Buckling of Compressed Rectangular Panels with Variable Stiffener Sizes

Abstract

Recent advancement in manufacturing technology has initiated a new phase of buckling structures analysis and structural design research development. As the ability to manufacture stiffeners in complex shapes has become increasingly more sophisticated, researchers are able to further enhance the design of thin-walled stiffeners. This paper presents an attempt to discover a structural design which employs the use of sub-stiffeners and the ability to retain maximal buckling load. FEM analysis was performed on compression loaded rectangular stiffened panels clamped on all sides to determine optimal attributes of two panel concepts: (1) stiffeners height changes according to sinusoidal law across the panel width, (2) stiffeners area changes according to sinusoidal law across the panel width. In both cases, total volume of the material was held constant. Non-dimensional parameters of the optimal panels were obtained. It was found that there was a positive correlation between the amount of change in buckling patterns caused by a sub-stiffener, and the amount of initial buckling load which could be obtained.