Finite element analysis of stiffened plates

The paper presents the development of a new plate/shell stiffener element and the subsequent application in determine frequencies, mode shapes and buckling loads of different stiffened panels. In structural modelling, the plate and the stiffener are treated as separate finite elements where the displacement compatibility transformation takes into account the torsion – flexural coupling in the stiffener and the eccentricity of internal (contact) forces between the beam – plate/shell parts. The model becomes considerably more flexible due to this coupling technique. The development of the stiffener is based on a general beam theory, which includes the constraint torsional warping effect and the second order terms of finite rotations. Numerical tests are presented to demonstrate the importance of torsion warping constraints. As part of the validation of the results, complete shell finite element analyses were made for stiffened plates.