Buckling Strength Increment of Curved Panels Due to Rotational Stiffness of Closed-Section Ribs Under Uniaxial Compression

Recently, there have been studies about the increasing effect on the local plate buckling strength of flat plates when longitudinally stiffened with closed-section ribs and an approximate solution to quantitatively estimate these effects were suggested for flat plates. Since there are few studies to utilize such increasing effect on curved panels and a proper design method is not proposed, thus, this study aims to numerically evaluate such effect due to the rotational stiffness of closed-section ribs on curved panels and to propose an approximate method for estimating the buckling strength. Three-dimensional finite element models were set up using a general structural analysis program ABAQUS and a series of parametric numerical analyses were conducted in order to examine the variation of buckling stresses along with the rotational stiffness of closed-section ribs. By using a methodology that combine the strength increment factor due to the restraining effect by closed-section ribs and the buckling coefficient of the panel curvature, the approximate solutions for the estimation of buckling strength were suggested. The validity of the proposed methods was verified through a comparative study with the numerical analysis results.