Validation of the ULSAP Closed-Form Method for Ultimate Strength Analysis of Cross-Stiffened Panels

This thesis presents the results of 67 ABAQUS elasto-plastic Riks ultimate strength analyses of cross-stiffened panels. These panels cover a wide range of typical geometries. Uniaxial compression is applied to the panels, and in some cases combined with lateral pressure. For eight of the panels full-scale experimental results are available, and these verified the accuracy of the ABAQUS results. The 67 ABAQUS results were then compared to the ultimate strength predictions from the computer program ULSAP. In all but 10 cases the ULSAP predicted strength is within 30% of the ABAQUS value, and in all but 4 cases the predicted failure mode also agrees with that of ABAQUS. In one case the ULSAP predicted ultimate strength is 51% below the experimental value, and so this case is studied in detail. The discrepancy is found to be caused by the method which ULSAP uses for panels that experience overall collapse initiated by beam-column-type failure. The beam-column method program ULTBEAM is used to predict the ultimate strength of the 61 panels that ULSAP predicts to fail due to overall collapse of the stiffeners and plating which may or may not be triggered by yielding of the plate-stiffener combination at the midspan (Mode III or III-1). ULTBEAM is found to give more accurate results than ULSAP for Mode III or III-1 failure. Future work is recommended to incorporate ULTBEAM into ULSAP to predict the ultimate strength of panels that fail in Mode III or III-1.