Buckling analysis of corrugated plates using a mesh-free Galerkin method based on the first-order shear deformation theory

This paper deals with elastic buckling analysis of stiffened and un-stiffened corrugated plates via a mesh-free Galerkin method based on the first-order shear deformation theory (FSDT). The corrugated plates are approximated by orthotropic plates of uniform thickness that have different elastic properties along the two perpendicular directions of the plates. The key to the approximation is that the equivalaent elastic properties of the orthotropic plates are derived by applying constant curvature conditions to the corrugated sheet. The stiffened corrugated plates are analyzed as stiffened orthotropic plates. The stiffeners are modelled as beams. The stiffness matrix of the stiffened corrugated plate is obtained by superimposing the strain energy of the equivalent orthotropic plate and the beams after implementing the displacement compatibility conditions between the plate and the beams. The mesh free characteristic of the proposed method guarantee that the stiffeners can be placed anywhere on the plate and that remeshing is avoided when the stiffener positions change. A few selected examples are studied to demonstrate the accuracy and convergence of the proposed method. The results obtained for these examples when possible are compared with the ANSYS solutions or other available solutions in literature. Good agreement is evident for all cases. Some new results for both trapezoidally and sinusoidally corrugated plates are then reported. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.