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Buckling Load Prediction in Ortho-Grid Plates for Aerospace Structures

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Abstract

Iso-grid structures provide high strength with reduced weights, which is an essential requirement for aerospace applications. Buckling of Ortho-grid structure is a phenomenon with complex interaction between skin, stiffeners and sub-stiffeners. Introduction of sub-stiffeners increases the load bearing capacity of the structures many folds as compared to the classical Iso-grid or Ortho-grid structure. In this work, a customized MATLAB® code is developed for computational analysis based on finite element (FE) analysis. In case of FE analysis, the degenerated shell element is used. In the first phase of the MATLAB® code development, an elasto-plastic analysis of a clamped quadratic-shell is performed and the results are verified with the published literature. In the next phase, the buckling analysis of thin-plate is performed and the results are again verified with the literature. After verification of developed code, FE analysis of the Ortho-grid-stiffened plates is successfully validated. The results attained from developed code are compared with analysis performed on ANSYS® software along with the published work. The results revalidate the fact that stiffeners increase buckling load by over fifty times, which stands the main motive for their use in aerospace industry.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Space and Technology, Islamabad, 44000, Pakistan

    Rizwan Sabir, Abid Ali Khan, Hassan Junaid Hasham & Irfan Ali Khan

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  1. Rizwan Sabir
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  2. Abid Ali Khan
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  4. Irfan Ali Khan
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Correspondence to Abid Ali Khan.

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Sabir, R., Khan, A.A., Hasham, H.J. et al. Buckling Load Prediction in Ortho-Grid Plates for Aerospace Structures. J Fail. Anal. and Preven. 18, 647–658 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11668-018-0453-1

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