Estimation of Buckling and Ultimate Collapse Behaviour of Stiffened Curved Plates under Compressive Load

Unstiffened and stiffened cylindrically curved plates are often used in ship structures. For example, they can be found on a deck with a camber, a side shell at the fore and aft parts, and the circular bilge part of a ship structure. It is believed that such cylindrically curved plates can be fundamentally modelled using a portion of a circular cylinder. From estimations using cylindrically curved plate models, it is known that the curvature generally increases the buckling strength compared to a flat plate under axial compression. The existence of curvature is also expected to increase both the ultimate and buckling strengths. In the present study, a series of finite element analyses were conducted on stiffened curved plates with several varying parameters such as the curvature, panel slenderness ratio, and web height and type of stiffener applied. The results of numerical calculations on stiffened and unstiffened curved plates were examined to clarify the influences of such parameters on the characteristics of their buckling/plastic collapse behavior and strength under an axial compression.