Bending Analysis of Plate Structures by Strip Elements

Abstract

The research on the analysis of plate structures has a long history and a number of kinds of method for analysis have been proposed. The Finite Element Method, which is characterized by its systematic analytical process and generality for application, may be the most powerful method among them.
However, it has disadvantages that the number of unknowns becomes large and that a relatively long computing time is needed for good accuracy. In a case where shapes of main plate elements composing plate structures are simple and moreover they are orientated in one direction, these features may be seen in many actual plate structures, it is one way to adopt the Finite Strip Method which has been developed successfully for bending or vibration problems of plate structures by Y. K. Cheung and others.
In this paper, it is treated how to deal with stiffener elements in the Finite Strip Method. It is assumed here that stiffeners are not so deep that they can be treated as beams, which implies that the section do not deform. In addition to longitudinal stiffeners mentioned roughly in the previous paper on the buckling analysis of plate structuers, transvers stiffeners with arbitrary section properties and locations are treated.
It is presumed that the basic concept on transverse stiffeners may extend applicability of the Finite Strip Method up to considerably wide range. Besides check calculations, the computed results were compared with the experiments for the several kinds of simple plate structuers and the accordance of them was satisfactory.