Collapse behaviour and ultimate strength of stiffened panels with arbitrary number of stiffeners subjected to longitudinal thrust

In this paper, a series of nonlinear FEM analyses are firstly performed on stiffened panels varying number/type/size of stiffeners as well as slenderness ratio and aspect ratio of local panels. Two length and width of local panel are kept the same in one series. The calculated ultimate strength is compared with those by existing methods. On the basis of comparison, appropriate method is recommended to evaluate ultimate strength of stiffened panels subjected to longitudinal thrust.