Isogeometric Buckling Analysis of Stiffened Plates

Isogeometric analysis is a new approach in computational mechanics where the geometry and computational modeling is carried out by using NURBS and B-spline functions. The main advantage of the isogeometric approach is in unifying the discretization and problem-solving processes that lead to saving of computational time and cost. In this research, the governing equations of buckling analysis of thin plates stiffened with stiffeners with various geometries are obtained by use of the variational accounting method and first-order shear deformation theory (FSDT). The geometry of stiffener and its position on arbitrarily plate are considered. The equation of buckling is derived by employing the total potential energy, and the obtained system of equations is solved by discretization with the isogeometric analysis method. One of the main advantages of this approach is that it does not need a fine mesh for unification of the connection between the plate and its stiffeners so that, it leads to more accurate answers in comparison with other numerical methods and commercial software with the same number of unknowns. Finally, In order to verification, a few examples are presented and the obtained results are compared with the available results of the analytical and numerical method.