INFLUENCE OF LATERAL RESTRAINT ON THE STABILITY OF STIFFENED PLATES UNDER UNIFORM COMPRESSION

This paper investigates the influence of lateral restraint on the buck ling behavior of stiffened plates under uniform compression. As a firs t stage, a numerical procedure is presented for stability analysis of stiffened plates. The structure is idealized as assembled plate and be am elements, rigidity connected at their junctions. Strain energy comp onents for plate and stiffener elements are then derived in terms of o ut-and in-plane displacement functions. The Sequential Quadratic Progr amming (SQP) technique is then used to determine the critical buckling load for given plate/stiffener geometric properties. Results are pres ented, showing the transition from the overall mode to the local mode by increasing stiffener depth for various concentric and eccentric sti ffening configurations. Finally, the influence of lateral restraint on buckling behavior of multi-stiffened plates is illustrated.