Similarity criteria for the buckling process of stiffened plates subjected to compressive load

Abstract The coupled effect of geometric and material nonlinearity existing in the buckling process of the stiffened plates sometimes makes it difficult to evaluate their ultimate load capacity numerically. Therefore, so far, experimental tests are still indispensable in the design process of a complicated structure. However, the experimental methods for predicting the whole buckling process of a stiffened plate subjected to in-plane compressive load are still not well developed. In this paper, the fundamental element in the complicated bearing structures, stiffened plate, was set as the object, and its buckling process was deeply analysed. Then, a set of similarity criteria for the stiffened plate subjected to compressive load were proposed based on the Buckingham's Pi theorem, by which the designed scale models for experimental tests could keep similar to the real structures in the whole loading process. Then, the similarity criteria were verified by numerical simulations and experimental tests with different scale models. The work presenting in this paper may potentially contribute to improving the precision of the experimental prediction of the structural ultimate load capacity and the corresponding optimization works.