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Effective breadth for top-hat stiffened composite structures

Effective breadth for top-hat stiffened composite structures
Effective breadth for top-hat stiffened composite structures
Structural design often considers single beams instead of larger structures. To allow the single stiffener to be considered instead of the plate requires an assumption that the stress in the structure is carried through the stiffeners and not the attached plate, and therefore the stresses in each member do not interact. However, this assumption is not completely realistic so effective breadth has been developed to calculate an area of plate, carrying a uniform stress ensuring that the stresses are close to those in the larger structure. It is commonly used to design uniformly loaded structures such as ships, bridges and aircraft; allowing the replacement of complex and computationally expensive structural units with smaller monodimensional elements. Despite the effective breadth having been widely investigated for metallic structures specific derivations for composites are still limited, as they are still based on these original definitions. Almost every study that has been performed leads to the creation of a new formula but these studies tend not to compare back to the original larger structural units. This paper investigates the use of effective breadth for composite top-hat stiffened structures by comparing a number of definitions of effective breadth. It is shown that there is a wide variation in the different definitions and that comparison to realistic structural units is important, to ensure that the individual beams are replicating the behaviour of the full structure. The position of the stiffener is important, with intersection stresses calculated accurately but edge stresses giving poorer results, and a new formula is proposed to account for this.
Composites, Finite element analysis, Grillage analysis, Rule development, Stiffened structures
0029-8018
1-10
Lu, J.
f9001d65-52c7-4c1d-beb9-29369f74d9b5
Arnaud, E
47ac68c5-13c1-475a-ad87-bcb765187374
Sobey, Adam
e850606f-aa79-4c99-8682-2cfffda3cd28
Lu, J.
f9001d65-52c7-4c1d-beb9-29369f74d9b5
Arnaud, E
47ac68c5-13c1-475a-ad87-bcb765187374
Sobey, Adam
e850606f-aa79-4c99-8682-2cfffda3cd28

Lu, J., Arnaud, E and Sobey, Adam (2020) Effective breadth for top-hat stiffened composite structures. Ocean Engineering, 196, 1-10, [106841]. (doi:10.1016/j.oceaneng.2019.106841).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Structural design often considers single beams instead of larger structures. To allow the single stiffener to be considered instead of the plate requires an assumption that the stress in the structure is carried through the stiffeners and not the attached plate, and therefore the stresses in each member do not interact. However, this assumption is not completely realistic so effective breadth has been developed to calculate an area of plate, carrying a uniform stress ensuring that the stresses are close to those in the larger structure. It is commonly used to design uniformly loaded structures such as ships, bridges and aircraft; allowing the replacement of complex and computationally expensive structural units with smaller monodimensional elements. Despite the effective breadth having been widely investigated for metallic structures specific derivations for composites are still limited, as they are still based on these original definitions. Almost every study that has been performed leads to the creation of a new formula but these studies tend not to compare back to the original larger structural units. This paper investigates the use of effective breadth for composite top-hat stiffened structures by comparing a number of definitions of effective breadth. It is shown that there is a wide variation in the different definitions and that comparison to realistic structural units is important, to ensure that the individual beams are replicating the behaviour of the full structure. The position of the stiffener is important, with intersection stresses calculated accurately but edge stresses giving poorer results, and a new formula is proposed to account for this.

Text
Sobey - Journal Paper Post Second Review - Accepted Manuscript
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More information

Accepted/In Press date: 7 December 2019
e-pub ahead of print date: 13 December 2019
Published date: 15 January 2020
Keywords: Composites, Finite element analysis, Grillage analysis, Rule development, Stiffened structures

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 436578
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/436578
ISSN: 0029-8018
PURE UUID: 30368a34-6e4d-4c93-bf69-3f19bcbbe163
ORCID for Adam Sobey: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-6880-8338

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 16 Dec 2019 17:30
Last modified: 17 Mar 2024 05:08

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Contributors

Author: J. Lu
Author: E Arnaud
Author: Adam Sobey ORCID iD

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