Optimal stiffener design of moderately thick plates under uniaxial and biaxial compression

Abstract In this paper, the optimal stiffener design of moderately thick plates under uniaxial and biaxial compression is investigated on the premise that the plate thickness and the required ultimate strength are given. As the theoretical basis of stiffener design, the ultimate strength formulations of weak stiffened thick panels under in-plane biaxial compression are first developed on the basis of large deflection orthotropic plate theory, in which the post-weld initial deflection is taken into account. The von Mises yield criterion is employed to determine the limit state of the panel, and the Nelder–Mead simplex algorithm is used to obtain the efficient solution of nonlinear differential equations. The optimization method presented is based on the stiffener design principles of the overall instability stress and of the working stress. In the optimization formulation, the numbers and geometric sizes of the stiffeners are defined as design variables; the weight ratio of stiffeners to plate is taken as a single objective function; requirements against overall buckling of the panel, local buckling of the plates between the stiffeners and local buckling of the stiffeners themselves are set as constraint functions. Results of both design examples and parameter studies show that, for moderately thick plates, the stiffener weight given by the proposed optimization method is much lower than the weight determined by the current stiffener design method on the premise of the same requirement of structural safety. Using the present optimization method to obtain the lightest and the most effective stiffener layout for moderately thick plates is proposed.