Explicit Topology Optimization Design of Stiffened Plate Structures Based on the Moving Morphable Component(MMC)Method

This paper proposes an explicit method for topology optimization of stiffened plate structures.The present work is devoted to simultaneously optimizing stiffeners’shape,size and layout by seeking the optimal geometry parameters of a series of moving morphable components(MMC).The stiffeners with straight skeletons and the stiffeners with curved skeletons are considered to enhance the modeling and optimization capability of the current approach.All the stiffeners are represented under the Lagrangian-description framework in a fully explicit way,and the adaptive ground structure method,as well as dynamically updated plate/shell elements,is used to obtain optimized designs with more accurate analysis results.Compared with existing works,the proposed approach provides an explicit description of the structure.Thus,a stiffened plate structure with clear stiffener distribution and smooth geometric boundary can be obtained.Several numerical examples provided,including straight and curved stiffeners,hierarchical stiffeners,and a stiffened plate with a cutout,validate the effectiveness and applicability of the proposed approach.

Fatigue behavior of aluminum stiffened plate subjected to random vibration loading

Vibration tests were carried out on three types of stiffened aluminum plates with fully clamped boundaries under random base excitation. During the test, the response of the specimens was monitored using strain gauges. Based on the strain history, the accumulation of fatigue damage of the stiffened plates was estimated by means of the rainflow cycle counting technique and the Miner linear damage accumulation model in the time domain. Utilizing the change of natural frequencies, a nonlinear model was fitted for predicting the fatigue damage of plate and then the foregone failure criterion of 5% reduction in natural frequency is improved. The influence of section and spacing of the stiffeners on the vibration fatigue behavior of the aluminum plate was investigated. The results show that the fatigue life of aluminum plate increases with adding either T or L section riveted stiffeners. With the same cross-sectional area of stiffener, the T section stiffened plate shows longer fatigue life than L section stiffened plate. Meanwhile, the vibration fatigue life also shows great sensitivity to the spacing between the stiffeners.

A study of the perforation of stiffened plates by rigid projectiles

In the present paper, a four-stage perforation model that accurately predicts the residual velocity is developed by adopting an energy method. The four stages are plug formation, dishing formation, petal formation and projectile exit. In addition, some important experimental results are presented and analyzed to validate the present perforation model. In the experiments, high speed camera system is used to record the perforation process. Observations on target damage and measurements of initial velocities and residual velocities with the aid of the system are presented. Numerical simulations are carried out for projectiles against single and layered plates adopted in the experiments. The perforation process is studied and the deformation and failure modes are obtained. The predictions of numerical simulations and analytical model are found in reasonably good agreement with those of experiments, and can be used to predict the ballistic limit and residual velocity of stiffened plates perforated by rigid projectiles.

B-Spline Wavelet on Interval Finite Element Method for Static and Vibration Analysis of Stiffened Flexible Thin Plate

A new wavelet finite element method(WFEM)is constructed in this paper and two elements for bending and free vibration problems of a stiffened plate are analyzed.By means of generalized potential energy function and virtual work principle,the formulations of the bending and free vibration problems of the stiffened plate are derived separately.Then,the scaling functions of the B-spline wavelet on the interval(BSWI)are introduced to discrete the solving field variables instead of conventional polynomial interpolation.Finally,the corresponding two problems can be resolved following the traditional finite element frame.There are some advantages of the constructed elements in structural analysis.Due to the excellent features of the wavelet,such as multi-scale and localization characteristics,and the excellent numerical approximation property of the BSWI,the precise and efficient analysis can be achieved.Besides,transformation matrix is used to translate the meaningless wavelet coefficients into physical space,thus the resolving process is simplified.In order to verify the superiority of the constructed method in stiffened plate analysis,several numerical examples are given in the end.

Dynamic Response of Stiffened Plates with Holes Subjected to Shock Waves and Fragments

The power field of shock waves and fragments is analyzed and set up, and the damage modes of stiffened plates are put forward. According to the structural characters of the stiffened plates investigated and the properties of the shock waves and fragments, the experiments on the shock waves acting on the stiffened plates (penetrated and non-penetrated by fragments) are mainly conducted. The dynamic response rules of stiffened plates with holes under shock waves and fragments loading are obtained. The results show that the penetration of fragments into stiffened plates hardly affects their deformation produced by shock waves..

One-Dimensional Localization of Elastic Waves in Rib-Stiffened Plates

The 1 dimensional localization of elastic waves in disordered periodic multi span rib stiffened plates is investigated. The transfer matrix method is employed to obtain the transfer matrix of the system, and the method for calculating the Lyapunov exponents in continuous dynamic systems presented by Wolf is used to determine the localization factor. As examples, the numerical results of the localization factors are given for a disordered rib stiffened plate. The effects of the degree of disorder of span...

Buckling and large deflection behaviors of radially functionally graded ring-stiffened circular plates with various boundary conditions

The buckling and large deflection behaviors of axis-symmetric radially functionally graded （RFG） ring-stiffened circular plates are investigated by the dynamic relaxation （DR） method combined with the finite difference discretization technique. The material properties of the constituent components of the RFG plate are assumed to vary continuously according to the Mori-Tanalka distribution along the radial direction. The nonlinear governing equations are obtained in the incremental form based on the firstorder shear deformation plate theory （FSDT） and the von Karman relations for large deflection. In the buckling analysis, an external in-plane load is applied to the plate in- crementally so that, in each load-step, the incremental form of the governing equations can be solved by a numerical code prepared based on the DR method. After converging the DR code in the first increment, the latter load-step is added to the previous one, and the program is repeated again. The critical buckling load is determined from the compressive load-displacement curve obtained by solving the incremental form of the governing equations. Based on the present incremental form of formulation, a bending analysis can also be conducted if the whole load is applied simultaneously. Finally, a detailed parametric study is carried out to investigate the influences of various boundary conditions, grading indices, thickness-to-radius ratios, stiffener＇s positions and depths on the critical buckling load, and displacements and stresses resulted from the bending analysis. It is observed that the effect of the stiffener on the results is much greater in the functionally graded plate with higher material grading indices. The results also reveal that, by increasing the depth of the stiffer, the values of ascending the critical buckling load are approximately identical for both simply supported and clamped boundary conditions.

Geometrically Nonlinear Random Responses of Stiffened Plates Under Acoustic Pressure

An algorithm integrating reduced order model(ROM),equivalent linearization(EL),and finite element method(FEM)is proposed to carry out geometrically nonlinear random vibration analysis of stiffened plates under acoustic pressure loading.Based on large deflection finite element formulation,the nonlinear equations of motion of stiffened plates are obtained.To reduce the computation,a reduced order model of the structures is established.Then the EL technique is incorporated into FE software NASTRAN by the direct matrix abstraction program(DMAP).For the stiffened plates,a finite element model of beam and plate assembly is established,in which the nodes of beam elements are shared with shell elements,and the offset and section properties of the beam are set.The presented method can capture the root-mean-square(RMS) of the stress responses of shell and beam elements of stiffened plates,and analyze the stress distribution of the stiffened surface and the unstiffened surface,respectively.Finally,the statistical dynamic response results obtained by linear and EL methods are compared.It is shown that the proposed method can be used to analyze the geometrically nonlinear random responses of stiffened plates.The geometric nonlinearity plays an important role in the vibration response of stiffened plates,particularly at high acoustic pressure loading.

Dynamic plastic response of clamped stiffened plates with large deflection

Study on the dynamic response, and especially the nonlinear dynamic response of stiffened plates is complicated by their discontinuity and inhomogeneity. The finite element method (FEM) and the finite strip method are usually adopted in their analysis. Although many useful conclusions have been obtained, the computational cost is enormous. Based on some assumptions, the dynamic plastic response of clamped stiffened plates with large deflections was theoretically investigated herein by a singly symmetric beam model. Firstly, the deflection conditions that a plastic string must satisfy were obtained by the linearized moment-axial force interaction curve for singly symmetric cross sections and the associated plastic flow rule. Secondly, the possible motion mechanisms of the beam under different load intensity were analysed in detail. For structures with plastic deformations, a simplified method was then given that the arbitrary impact load can be replaced equivalently by a rectangular pulse. Finally, to confirm the validity of the proposed method, the dynamic plastic response of a one-way stiffened plate with four fully clamped edges was calculated. The theoretical results were in good agreement with those of FEM. It indicates that the present calculation model is easy and feasible, and the equivalent substitution of load almost has no influence on the final deflection.

Inverse Load Identification in Stiffened Plate Structure Based on in situ Strain Measurement

For practical engineering structures,it is usually difficult to measure external load distribution in a direct manner,which makes inverse load identification important.Specifically,load identification is a typical inverse problem,for which the models(e.g.,response matrix)are often ill-posed,resulting in degraded accuracy and impaired noise immunity of load identification.This study aims at identifying external loads in a stiffened plate structure,through comparing the effectiveness of different methods for parameter selection in regulation problems,including the Generalized Cross Validation(GCV)method,the Ordinary Cross Validation method and the truncated singular value decomposition method.With demonstrated high accuracy,the GCV method is used to identify concentrated loads in three different directions(e.g.,vertical,lateral and longitudinal)exerted on a stiffened plate.The results show that the GCV method is able to effectively identify multi-source static loads,with relative errors less than 5%.Moreover,under the situation of swept frequency excitation,when the excitation frequency is near the natural frequency of the structure,the GCV method can achieve much higher accuracy compared with direct inversion.At other excitation frequencies,the average recognition error of the GCV method load identification less than 10%.

Distribution of Welding Residual Stress of Mixed Steel U-Rib-Stiffened Plates

To analyze the effects of width and thickness of each composition element of mixed steel U-rib-stiffened plates on the welding residual stress distribution, the distribution of the U-rib and the plate residual stress was calculated using a simplified calculation method. The method involved welding the mixed steel U-rib-stiffened plates for a structure with different sizes and different strength ratios of U-rib to plate. Based on a welding residual stress numerical simulation method validated by the blind hole method test, the distribution law of the mixed steel U-rib stiffened plate was studied. The results showed that the change of plate width has little impact on the welding residual stress and that the ratio of the thicknesses of the plate to U-rib stiffeners, the thickness of the plate, and the thickness of the U-rib has a great influence on the distribution of the welding residual stress. The thickness of plate and steel strength also greatly influenced the distribution width of the residual tensile stress. While analyzing the compression capacity of U-rib-stiffened plates, the simplified distribution of welding residual stress was used.

Experimental and Numerical Investigation on the Ultimate Strength of Stiffened Plates with Scanned Initial Geometrical Imperfection

The study of the ultimate strength of stiffened plates is a hot topic in ocean engineering. The ultimate strength and behavior of collapse of stiffened plates were investigated using experimental and numerical methods. Two stiffened plates, with one and two half-bays in both longitudinal and transverse directions, were tested under the uniaxial compression. There were clamped boundaries at both ends of the stiffened panels and a restrained boundary on the transverse frames. The novel three-dimensional laser scanning technology was used to measure the initial geometric imperfections and the ultimate deformation of the stiffened panels after the test. The initial geometric deformation was imported into the finite element model, and the ultimate strength and behavior of collapse of the stiffened plates were calculated using the finite element analysis. FE analysis results based on the measured initial geometric imperfections were compared with the test results. It is concluded that structural deformation can be well measured by three-dimensional laser scanning technology, and can be conveniently imported into the finite element analysis. With the measured initial geometric imperfections considered, the FE analysis results agree well with the experimental results in ultimate strength, behavior of collapse, and the ultimate displacement distribution of the stiffened panels.

Dimensional Analysis on the Perforation of Stiffened Plates by Projectiles

The phenomena attendant to the perforation of truncated oval shape projectile into multi-layered stiffened plates were investigated. Dimensional analysis was employed to give an empirical formula. Then a membership function was introduced to modify the empirical formula. The effects of initial velocities, base plate thicknesses, height and width of stiffener on residual velocities were explored. The predictions of the empirical formula are in reasonably good agreement with those of experiment and numerical results. All these results indicate that the empirical formula is capable of predicting the residual velocity of the projectile penetrating the multi-layered stiffened plates.

DYNAMIC BUCKLING OF STIFFENED PLATES UNDER FLUID-SOLID IMPACT LOAD

A simple solution of the dynamic buckling of stiffened plates under fluid-solid impact loading is presented.Based on large deflection theory,a discretely stiffened plate model has been used.The tangential stresses of stiffeners and in-plane displacement are neglected.Applying the (Hamilton's) principle,the motion equations of stiffened plates are obtained.The deflection of the plate is taken as Fourier series,and using Galerkin method,the discrete equations can be deduced,which can be solved easily by Runge-Kutta method.The dynamic buckling loads of the stiffened plates are obtained from Budiansky-Roth(B-R) curves.

A General Model for Analysis of Sound Radiation from Orthogonally Stiffened Laminated Composite Plates

A general theoretical model is developed to investigate the sound radiation from an infinite orthogonally stiffened plate under point excitation force. The plate can be metallic or composite, and fluid loading is also considered in the research. The first order shear deformation theory is used to account for the transverse shear deformation. The motion of the equally spaced stiffeners is examined by considering their bending vibrations and torsional movements. Based on the periodic structure theory and the concepts of the equivalent dynamic flexibility of the plate, the generalized vibro-acoustic equation of the model is obtained by applying the Fourier transform method. The generalized model that can be solved numerically is validated by comparing model predictions with the existing results. Numerical calculations are performed to investigate the effects of the location of the excitation, the spacing of the stiffeners, the plate thickness, the strengthening form and the fiber orientation on the sound radiation characteristic of the orthogonaUy stiffened plate, and some practical conclusions are drawn from these parameter studies.

NUMERICAL ANALYSIS OF DELAMINATION GROWTH FOR STIFFENED COMPOSITE LAMINATED PLATES

A study of postbuckling and delamination propagation behavior in delaminated stiffened composite plates was presented. A methodology was proposed for simulating the multi-failure responses, such as initial and postbuckling, delamination onset and propagation, etc. A finite element analysis was conducted on the basis of the Mindlin first order shear effect theory and the von-Krmn nonlinear deformation assumption. The total energy release rate used as the criteria of delamination growth was estimated with virtual crack closure technique (VCCT). A self-adaptive grid moving technology was adopted to model the delamination growth process. Moreover, the contact effect along delamination front was also considered during the numerical simulation process. By some numerical examples, the influence of distribution and location of stiffener, configuration and size of the delamination, boundary condition and contact effect upon the delamination growth behavior of the stiffened composite plates were investigated. The method and numerical conclusion provided should be of great value to engineers dealing with composite structures.

Stresses due to an adhesion crack in T-shaped junction of two orthotropic plates

The general solution of stresses is derived for a T-shaped junction of two thin plates with an adhesion crack. The plates are orthotropic. A shear force is applied on the crack surface. The analysis is based on the supposition that the stresses in each plate can be approximated by a plane stress condition. The results obtained are verified by numerical calculation of FEM.

Nonlinear buckling finite element analysis of stiffened B-Al plates

Nonlinear buckling behavior of stiffened composite B-Al plates was analyzed by means of finite element analysis(FEA) method. In the method, the composite material was taken as B matrix into which Al fibers were embedded in different configurations. The laminated B-Al material in the form of rectangular plates was subjected to lateral compressive loading. It is observed that stiffeners have significant effect on the buckling behavior of plates under compressive loading and for various geometrical configurations. The stiffeners used in the modeling are one-sided and have rectangular cross-sections. It is found that there are physically important loading intervals and the critical buckling modes make transitions back and forth between stable and unstable states. Bifurcation buckling regions resulting from various configurations of fiber orientations and different plate aspect ratios are determined. The whole analysis is performed by using ANSYS finite element computations. Only the buckling patterns of stiffened plate configurations under simply supported boundary conditions are studied. Distributions of compressive stresses(σx) vs in-plane contractions(u) and compressive stresses(σx) vs out-of plane deflections(δ) are obtained. Nonlinear analysis of the C2 fiber configuration yields the safest critical buckling stress amongst C1, C2, C3 and C4 configurations. It is concluded that FEA method for the nonlinear buckling analysis generates accurate results.

Constructal design method dealing with stiffened plates and symmetry boundaries

A new computational procedure for modelling the structural behavior of stiffened plates with symmetry boundary conditions is here presented.It uses two-dimensional finite elements as a way to decrease computational time without losing precision thanks to a relatively small number of elements applied for analyzing out-of-plane displacements(deflections)and stresses.Adding,the constructal design method was included in the procedure,together with the exhaustive search technique,with the scope to optimize the stress/strain status of stiffened plates by design changes.For the purpose,a reference plate without stiffeners was initially design and used as starting point.Part of the volume was reshaped into stiffeners:thickness was reduced maintaining unchanged weight,length and width.The main goal was to minimize strains and stresses by geometric changes.Results demonstrated that,thanks to this design procedure,it is always possible to find an adequate geometry transformation from reference plate into stiffeners,allowing significant improvements in mechanical behavior.

Nonlinear dynamic buckling of stiffened plates under in-plane impact load

This paper presents a simple solution of the dynamic buckling of stiffened plates under in-plane impact loading. Based on large deflection theory, a discretely stiffened plate model has been used. The tangential stresses of stiffeners and in-plane displacement are neglected. Appling the Hamilton's principle, the motion equations of stiffened plates are obtained. The deflection of the plate is taken as Fourier series, and using Galerkin method the discrete equations can be deduced, which can be solved easily by Runge-Kutta method. The dynamic buckling loads of the stiffened plates are obtained form Budiansky-Roth criterion.