Elastic and Inelastic Buckling Strength of Stiffened Panels and Grillages

This chapter presents the fundamentals and useful elastic buckling strength design formulations for a stiffened panel under combined loads and under single types of loads. The stocky stiffened panel will buckle in the inelastic regime with a certain degree of plasticity. In structural design, the order of the buckling modes for a stiffened panel or grillage needs to be controlled so that the overall buckling mode is prevented before local buckling of the plating between stiffeners. The chapter also presents the elastic overall buckling strength formulations of a stiffened panel under combined loads and single types of loads. Local buckling of the stiffener flange before buckling of the plating between the stiffeners is an undesirable failure mode. Like stiffener web buckling, lateral-torsional buckling can be a relatively sudden phenomenon that results in unloading of the stiffened panel.