Design and Analysis of Thin-walled Folded Plate Structure: Modeling of the Effects of Large Deformation and Stiffeners

Thin-walled folded plates are very important structures that are extensively used in various industrial areas due to their unique advantages such as high strength-to-weight ratio, combining structural and cladding functions, as well as aesthetically pleasing structural form. The proposed research will present a design and analysis approach for thin-walled folded plate structures with stiffeners by using a mesh-free Galerkin method to be developed in this project, taking into consideration the effect of large deformation behaviour such as large deflection, large amplitude vibration, local buckling and post-buckling characteristics. The proposed mesh-free method bases the solution entirely on scattered points within the problem domain so that no mesh or any other interrelationship between the points is required. The research outcome will provide a better understanding of the nonlinear behavior of complex thin-walled folded plate structures, and most importantly, will also provide the engineering community with a reliable optimization design tool.