MultiScience - XXXIII.

microCAD International Multidisciplinary Scientific Conference

University of Miskolc, 23-24 May, 2019, ISBN 978-963-358-177-3
NATURAL FREQUENCIES AND MODE SHAPES OF OPTIMIZED
STIFFENED PLATES

Zoltán Virág1, Sándor Szirbik2

1,2
PhD, Associate Professor
1,2
University of Miskolc, Hungary

1. INTRODUCTION

The basis for the design of stiffened plates under longitudinal compression is
outlined and predictions using several codes. Welded stiffened plate structures are
widely used in various structures, e.g. vehicles, bridges, bunkers, tank roofs etc.
They can be stiffened in one or two directions with stiffeners of different shapes. In
previous years we have developed a cost function containing the material and
fabrication costs and we have included in the design constraints also the quality
requirement, which prescribes the allowable deformation caused by residual
welding distortions [1, 2, 3].
The result of optimization for different manufacturing costs combined with a modal
analysis can shows usable results for future applicability and identifies the influence
of design variables on the structure's dynamic characteristics like resonant
frequencies. The dynamic behaviour of the structure can be investigated using a
finite element analysis (FEA), which is used to determine the forced response of the
plates.

2. GEOMETRIC CHARACTERISTICS

The compressed plate is shown in Figure 1. The investigated stiffened plates are
simple supported on four edges.

Fig. 1.
Longitudinally stiffened plate loaded by uniaxial compression

Geometrical parameters of plates with flat stiffeners can be seen in Figure 2.

DOI: 10.26649/musci.2019.056
 Fig. 2.
Dimensions of a flat stiffener

The geometrical parameters of the flat stiffener are calculated as

3. DESIGN CONSTRAINTS OF THE STIFFENED PLATE

3.1. Global buckling

The effect of residual welding stresses and initial imperfections is considered by

defining buckling curves for a reduced slenderness can be calculated according to
Mikami [4]

   f y /  cr 1 / 2 (9)

For a uniaxially compressed longitudinally stiffened plate the classical critical

buckling stress as
Knowing the reduced slenderness the actual global buckling stress can be calculated
as follows

3.2. Single panel buckling

The single panel buckling constraint eliminates the local buckling of the base plate
parts between the ribs. Calculated from the classical buckling formula for a simply
supported uniformly compressed in one direction

The reduced slenderness is


and in the function of the reduced slenderness the actual local buckling stress
considering the residual welding stresses and initial imperfections is

The single panel buckling constraint is

3.3. Local and torsional buckling of stiffeners

These instability phenomena depend on the shape of stiffeners. The torsional

buckling constraint for open section stiffeners is

N / A  UT (25)

The classical torsional buckling stress is

where G = E/2.6 is the shear modulus, IP is the polar moment of inertia, IT is the
torsional moment of inertia and Iω is the warping constant. In the function of the
reduced slenderness the actual torsional buckling stress can be calculated as

3.4 Distortion constraint

The large deflections due to weld shrinkage should be avoided. The allowable
residual deformation f0 can be prescribed by design rules. For compression struts
Eurocode 3 [5] prescribes f0 = L/1000. The distortion constraint is defined as

f max  CL2 / 8  f 0  L / 1000 (31)

where the curvature for steel material is

 C  0.844 x 103 QT yT / I x (32)

where yT is the weld eccentricity

yT  yG  tF / 2 (33)

QT is the heat input

Ix is the moment of inertia of the cross-section containing a stiffener and the base
plate strip of width b and aw = 0.5ts, but awmin = 4 mm.

5. COST FUNCTION

The objective function to be minimized is defined as the sum of material and

fabrication costs

K  Km  Kf  k m V  k f Ti (35)

or in another form

where  is the material density, V is the volume of the structure, Km and Kf as well
as km and kf are the material and fabrication costs as well as cost factors,
respectively, Ti are the fabrication times as follows:
time for preparation, tacking and assembly

T1  d V (37)

where d is a difficulty factor expressing the complexity of the welded structure,

 is the number of structural parts to be assembled;
T2 is time of welding, and T3 is time of additional works such as changing of
electrode, deslagging and chipping. T3 0.3T2, thus,

where Lwi is the length of welds, the values of C an can be obtained from formulae
2i wi
or diagrams constructed using the COSTCOMP [6] software, aw is the weld
dimension (Table 1.).
 Table 1.
Welding times in function of weld size aw (mm) for longitudinal fillet welds
downhand position

6. NUMERICAL DATA AND OPTIMUM RESULTS

The given data are width B = 6000 [mm], length L = 4000 [mm], compression force
N = 1.2 x 107 [N], Young modulus E = 2.1 x 105 [MPa], density ρ = 7.85 x 10-6
[kg/mm3]. The yield stress is fy = 235 [MPa]. The optimum results for different
fabrication costs calculated by Excel Solver NLP which uses gradient method where
the unknowns – the thicknesses of the base plate and the stiffener and the number of
the ribs - are limited in size (Eq. 39). The results for different costs are shown in
Table 2.
3 ≤ tf ≤ 40 [mm]
3 ≤ ts ≤ 20 [mm] (39)
3 ≤ φ ≤ 30

Table 2.
Optimum results
kf/km tf ts  K/km
[mm] [mm] [kg]
0 5 10 29 2172
1 11 12 10 3921
2 15 13 6 5060

7. MODAL ANALYSIS

Below are finite element representations of the three rectangular steel stiffened
plates which are simply supported on four edges. The geometric dimensions of the
selected stiffened plates are given in Table 2. The stiffened plates possessing
various number and thickness stiffeners have been analysed to determine their
natural frequencies and mode shapes that the plates oscillate within at natural
frequencies. The free vibrations occur at these discrete frequencies, depending only
on the geometry and material but in the absence of applied loads [7].
The main concept is the subdivision of the model of structure into non-overlapping
components of simple shaped geometry called finite elements with well-defined
stress displacement relationships. According to the finite element method (FEM),
the plates with stiffeners are divided into finite elements for the dynamic finite
element analysis (FEA). More detailed descriptions of finite element procedures can
be found in Bathe’s book [8].
To investigate the natural frequencies, a linear perturbation analysis for a thin shell
structure is performed in the commercial software Abaqus. In each FE model a
conventional shell model, a 4-node shell element (S4R) is employed. The FE model
of the first design contains 5643 linear shell elements, the second FE model does
3120 and the third one does 8150 such that the approximate global size is 70 mm.
The first eight natural frequencies for the three designs are listed in the Table 3.

Table 3.
Comparison of natural frequencies (rad/s)
Mode Plate 1. Plate 2. Plate 3.
No (kf/km = 0) (kf/km = 1) (kf/km = 2)
1. 142.57 140.82 120.15
2. 147.14 144.72 125.21
3. 159.08 153.07 138.00
4. 168.85 165.75 162.40
5. 177.06 186.35 201.54
6. 184.65 216.61 245.14
7. 192.89 257.32 291.79
8. 202.60 308.09 299.54

Different mode shapes at different frequencies are depicted in the Figures 3-5.

Fig. 3.
The first four modes of vibrations of rectangular plate for Plate 1.
 Fig. 4.
The first four modes of vibrations of rectangular plate for Plate 2.

Fig. 5.
The first four modes of vibrations of rectangular plate for Plate 3.
8. CONCLUSIONS

The result of optimization for different manufacturing costs and modal analysis
shows that we can obtain plates with different geometry and behaviour for a
particular load case. From the optimum results, it can be seen that the higher
production cost gives a thicker base plate with less ribs. The dynamic behaviour of
the structure can be investigated by mode superposition analysis. The finite element
analysis is a powerful technique which is enabled to obtain the forced response of
the plates.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

“The described article was carried out as part of the EFOP-3.6.1-16-2016-00011

“Younger and Renewing University – Innovative Knowledge City – institutional
development of the University of Miskolc aiming at intelligent specialisation”
project implemented in the framework of the Szechenyi 2020 program. The
realization of this project is supported by the European Union, co-financed by the
European Social Fund.”

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