Compound Strip Method for Plane Stress

The compound strip method (CSM) for plates is an expansion of the finite strip method (FSM) and was developed to incorporate the effects of the support elements in the analysis of linear elastic plate systems. In this paper the CSM is further expanded to analyze structures such as stiffened plates under loads in the plane of the plate or the so called plane-stress condition. Examples of these types of structures are retaining walls under gravity loads and stiffened plates used in tanks and containers. In this method of solution the stiffness of the stiffeners is added to the stiffness of the strip and summed over the entire structure. The displacement approach is used in formulation and resulting simultaneous equations are solved numerically. Two stiffened plate examples are solved using this approach and the results are compared with the finite element method.