Analysis of rectangular stiffened plates under uniform lateral load based on FSDT and element-free Galerkin method

This paper presents an element-free Galerkin (EFG) method for the static analysis of concentrically and eccentrically stiffened plates based on first-order shear deformable theory (FSDT). The stiffened plates are regarded as composite structures of plates and beams. Imposing displacement compatible conditions between the plate and the stiffener, the displacement fields of the stiffener can be expressed in terms of the mid-surface displacement of the plate. The strain energy of the plate and stiffener can be superimposed to obtain the stiffness matrix of the stiffed plate. Because there are no elements used in the meshless model of the plate, the stiffeners need not to be placed along the meshes, as is done in the finite element methods. The stiffeners can be placed at any location, and will not lead to the re-meshing of the plate. The validity of the EFG method is demonstrated by considering several concentrically and eccentrically stiffened plate problems. The present results show good agreement with the existing analytical and finite element solutions. The influences of support size (denoted by a scaling factor dmax) and order of the complete basis functions (Nc) on the numerical accuracy are also investigated. It is found that larger support size and higher order of basis function will furnish better convergence results. © 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.