Numerical simulation and constructal design applied to plates with different heights of traverse and longitudinal stiffeners

Abstract

This study applied the Constructal Design Method (CDM) associated with the Finite Element Method (FEM) through computational models to perform a geometric analysis on rectangular stiffened plates of steel subjected to a uniform transverse loading, in order to minimize its maximum and central out-of-plane deflections. Considering a non-stiffened plate as reference and maintaining the total volume of steel constant, a portion of material volume deducted from its thickness was transformed into stiffeners through the ϕ parameter, which represents the ratio between the material volume of the stiffeners and the reference plate. Adopting ϕ = 0.30, 27 geometric arrangements of stiffened plates were established, being 9 arrangements for each 3 different stiffeners' thicknesses adopted: ts = 6.35 mm, ts = 12.70 mm and ts = 25.40 mm. For each ts value, the number of longitudinal (Nls) and transverse (Nts) stiffeners were varied from 2 to 4. Thus, in each plate arrangement configured, the influence of the ratio between the height of the transverse and longitudinal stiffeners (hts/hls) was analyzed, taking into account the values 0.50; 0.75; 1.00; 1.25; 1.50; 1.75 and 2.00, regarding to the maximum and central deflections. The results have shown that transforming a portion of steel from a non-stiffened reference plate into stiffeners can reduce the maximum and central deflections by more than 90%. Moreover, it was observed that to reduce the deflections it is more effective consider hts > hls, once the ratio hts/hls = 2.00 was the one that led to the better mechanical behavior among the analyzed cases.