Stiffened plate is a fundamental element of ship and other engineering structures. Deflection and fracture of a clamped stiffened plate under lateral indentation by a spherical indenter was investigated by a semi-analytical approach and experiments. To investigate the influence of the indented position, two quasi-static experiments with different numbers of stiffeners were conducted. To predict the initial failure of the stiffened-plate maximum-resistance force up to this point, a semi-analytical approach was established. The results of the proposed semi-analytical approach were compared with the experimental results.
Stiffened plate is a fundamental element of ship and other engineering structures. The crashworthiness and failure mechanism of stiffened plates subjected to lateral indentation by a sphere have been studied extensively by researchers with experimental and theoretical methods.
To investigate the indentation resistance of hull panel during ship grounding, Alsos and Amdahl (2009) conducted a series of scale stiffened plate experiments with quasi-static loading. Meanwhile, Karlsson et al. (2009) conducted two scale quasistatic experiments of ship double-side structure subjected to lateral indentation by a sphere. To investigate the crashworthiness of stiffened plate, Cho and Lee (2009) conducted a series of pendulum impact experiments. Also, extensive analytical or semi-analytical research was conducted to predict the maximum resistance. For theoretical analysis of the clamped plate subjected to lateral indentation by a sphere, much research has been done. For example, Shen et al. (2002) and Shen (2002) presented a theoretical method to predict the onset of failure for thin circular plates struck by a conical indenter. Jones and Birch (2008), Jones et al. (2008), and Jones and Paik (2013) discussed the perforation energy for plates struck by a cylindrical indenter with different impact faces. However, for an analytical or semi-analytical study of clamped stiffener, there is not as much research as on clamped plate. Ohtsubo et al. (1995) proposed a simplified analysis method to discuss the crashworthiness of ship double-side structure subjected to collision by a bulbous bow. In their analysis, the shape of the bulbous bow is simplified as a truncated pyramid. Suzuki et al. (1999) proposed a simplified analysis method to discuss the crashworthiness of ship double-side structure subjected to collision by a wedge bow.
