China Ocean Eng., 2019, Vol. 33, No. 4, P.

446–458
DOI: 10.1007/s13344-019-0042-4, ISSN 0890-5487
http://www.chinaoceanengin.cn/ E-mail: coe@nhri.cn

Experimental and Numerical Investigation on the Ultimate Strength of

Stiffened Plates with Scanned Initial Geometrical Imperfection
YU Yang-zhe, FENG Guo-qing*, LI Chen-feng, REN Hui-long
College of Shipbuilding Engineering, Harbin Engineering University, Harbin 150001, China

Received June 14, 2018; revised January 10, 2019; accepted February 26, 2019

©2019 Chinese Ocean Engineering Society and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature

Abstract
The study of the ultimate strength of stiffened plates is a hot topic in ocean engineering. The ultimate strength and
behavior of collapse of stiffened plates were investigated using experimental and numerical methods. Two stiffened
plates, with one and two half-bays in both longitudinal and transverse directions, were tested under the uniaxial
compression. There were clamped boundaries at both ends of the stiffened panels and a restrained boundary on the
transverse frames. The novel three-dimensional laser scanning technology was used to measure the initial geometric
imperfections and the ultimate deformation of the stiffened panels after the test. The initial geometric deformation
was imported into the finite element model, and the ultimate strength and behavior of collapse of the stiffened plates
were calculated using the finite element analysis. FE analysis results based on the measured initial geometric
imperfections were compared with the test results. It is concluded that structural deformation can be well measured
by three-dimensional laser scanning technology, and can be conveniently imported into the finite element analysis.
With the measured initial geometric imperfections considered, the FE analysis results agree well with the
experimental results in ultimate strength, behavior of collapse, and the ultimate displacement distribution of the
stiffened panels.
Key words: Stiffened plate, ultimate strength, experiment, three dimensional laser scanning, initial geometric imperfection

Citation: Yu, Y. Z., Feng, G. Q., Li, C. F., Ren, H. L., 2019. Experimental and numerical investigation on the ultimate strength of stiffened
plates with scanned initial geometrical imperfection. China Ocean Eng., 33(4): 446–458, doi: 10.1007/s13344-019-0042-4

1 Introduction ure of the stiffened plates in the tests intended to be caused

Stiffened plates are the fundamental building form used
for ship and offshore structures. Great efforts have been
made to develop the effective method for the local and glob-
al strength assessment of ship and offshore structures. So, it
is significant to further understand the ultimate strength of
the stiffened panel. This is especially important as the limit
state practices are continually used in the structural design
(ISSC, 2015). The structural test is a direct and effective
method to evaluate the ultimate strength of the stiffened
panel. Gordo and Guedes Soares (2008a, 2008b, 2011) car-
ried out the compressive tests on the short, intermediate and
long stiffened panels by changing the distance between
transverse frames. The specimens were three-bay stiffened
panels with the associated plate made of very high tensile
steel S690. Ghavami (1994) carried out two series of tests
on the longitudinally stiffened steel plates with and without
the transverse stiffeners under the uniform axial in-plane
compression until they collapsed. Tanaka and Endo (1988)
conducted a series of tests on the longitudinally stiffened
panels with three flat bar stiffeners by three bays. The fail-
Foundation item: This work was funded by the 7th Generation Ultra Deep Water Drilling Unit Innovation Project.
*Corresponding author. E-mail: fgqac102@163.com
by the local buckling or tripping of the longitudinal stiffen-
ers. The stiffened plates of two half bays plus one full bay in
the longitudinal direction were used to investigate the ulti-
mate strength and behavior of collapse by Xu and Guedes
Soares (2013a, 2013b) and the effect of the width on the ul-
timate strength of the stiffened panels was analyzed.
The nonlinear finite element (FE) analysis is another
widely used method to evaluate the strength of stiffened and
unstiffened panels. This method can predict the complex
collapse behavior of structures in detail by considering the
geometry, boundaries and material nonlinearity. The ulti-
mate load bearing capacity of unstiffened rectangular steel
plates under a uniaxial compression was studied by Silva et
al. (2013). Shanmugam et al. (2014) discussed the ultimate
strength of the stiffened plates subjected to the combined
action of in-plane loads and lateral pressure using the soft-
ware ABAQUS. Feng et al. (2017) investigated the ultimate
strength of ship stiffened panel subjected to random corro-
sion degradation and the influence of corrosion on the ulti-
mate strength of the stiffened panel was quantified as a
 YU Yang-zhe et al. China Ocean Eng., 2019, Vol. 33, No. 4, P. 446–458
function of the corrosion volume.
Initial imperfections are unavoidably caused by the
manufacture and welding of the structures and there are sig-
nificant uncertainties regarding the magnitude and the de-
formation pattern (Guedes Soares, 1988a). It has been
widely accepted that the initial imperfections reduce the ri-
gidity and the ultimate strength of plates. Furthermore,
plates under the buckling loads tend to deform in way cor-
responding to their initial defects (Guedes Soares, 1988b).
In a word, initial imperfections have significant impact on
the ultimate strength as well as the behavior of collapse of
stiffened plates. Therefore, it is an important issue to accur-
ately describe the initial geometric imperfections when as-
sessing the ultimate strength of stiffened plates.
In recent studies (Fujikubo et al., 2005; Paik et al.,
2008), the initial deformation was assumed to have the same
shape as the trigonometric functions, i.e., the equivalent ini-
tial deformation. Xu and Guedes Soares (2013c) calculated
the ultimate strength of the stiffened plates with measured
initial geometric imperfections using a caliper ruler and the
equivalent geometric imperfections, and the numerical res-
ults were compared with the experimental data. Although
the equivalent geometric imperfections do not correspond
accurately to real structures, they are still widely used be-
cause the measurement of the geometric imperfections is not
convenient in engineering application. With the develop-
ment of three-dimensional (3D) scanning technology and
the availability of portable devices, the geometric imperfec-
tions measurement becomes more convenient. Hence, it is
feasible that the geometrical initial imperfections of the
stiffened panel for the ultimate strength assessment are
measured by 3D scanning technology.
The objective of this paper is to investigate the ultimate
strength and collapse behavior of stiffened plates of two half
bays plus one full bay under the uniaxial compression, with
the clamped boundaries at both ends of the panel and the re-
strained boundaries on the transverse frames using both ex-
perimental and numerical methods. The novelty lies in the
measurement of the deformation of the stiffened panel ap-
plying 3D scanning technology. The initial geometrical im-
perfections for both plate and stiffener of the stiffened pan-
el were measured through 3D scanning and then were re-
stored by the inverse processing technology. The restored
initial deformation of the stiffened panel was imported into
the numerical analysis. The numerical results regarding the
ultimate strength and behavior of collapse were compared
with the experimental ones. The deformation distribution of
the stiffened panel after collapse was quantified using 3D
scanning measurement and was compared using the finite
element analysis.
2 Ultimate strength experiments of stiffened plates
2.1 Experimental arrangement
The test aimed at the ultimate strength assessment of the
stiffened panels under the uniaxial compression, with
447
clamped boundaries at both ends of the panel and restrained
boundaries on the transverse frames. The stiffened panel
with two bays (1/2+1+1/2) made of steel AH36 was used in
this test. The currently widely used principle to assess the
ultimate strength of the stiffened panel is based on the plate
slenderness ratio, β , and the column slenderness ratio, λ (Xu
and Guedes Soares, 2012a; Saad-Eldeen et al., 2015).
√
b σy
β= ; (1)
tp E
√
a σy
λ= , (2)
r E
where, b is the width of the plate of one bay, tp is the thick-
ness of the panel, σy is the yielding strength of the material
and E is the Young’s modulus, a is the length of the plate of
one bay, r is the radius of inertia of the stiffener.
The plate slenderness ratio is generally from 1 to 5
(Smith, 1975; Guedes Soares, 1992) and the column slen-
derness ratio is from 2 to 7.5 for ship stiffened panels (Xu
and Guedes Soares, 2013c). So without any loss of applic-
ability, the stiffened plate is designed according to the plate
slenderness ratio of 1.77, and the column slenderness ratio
of 4.35. The thickness of the plate is 5 mm, the frame space
is 400 mm and the space between stiffeners is 190 mm. The
frame of the stiffened panel is a tee section bar with a web
of 40 mm×4 mm and a face plate of 25 mm×5 mm respect-
ively, and the stiffener is a flat bar of 20 mm×4 mm, as
shown in Fig. 1.
Fig. 1. Geometry of the stiffened panel (unit: mm).
A 1000 kN hydraulic actuator was used in the experi-
ments on the stiffened panels. The uniaxial compression
was accomplished by using displacement control. For each
loading step, the displacement was exerted slowly enough to
obtain the static structural response and the load-shortening
curve was recorded. The end edges of the stiffened plates
were tightly clamped by the steel blocks to produce fixed
boundaries at the ends of the panel. The ends of the
stiffened plate could only move with the steel blocks in an
axial direction following the round bar guide rails. Four
greased clevises embraced the guide rails of the square bar.
448 YU Yang-zhe et al. China Ocean Eng., 2019, Vol. 33, No. 4, P. 446–458

The clevis was designed to support the frame with contact

connection at ends of the frame and with gaps running per-
pendicular to the panel, as shown in Fig. 2. Consequently,
the rotation and translation of the frame ends were respect-
ively constrained around the long edge of the panel (x axis)
and along the transverse of the panel (y axis). Due to the
gaps between the clevis and the stiffened plate, no addition-
al contacts occurred between the clevis and the stiffened
panel except for the support of the clevis at the ends of the
frame. So, the deformation of the stiffened plate was al-
lowed at the frame ends.
Strain gauges (s1–s7) were evenly arranged at the inter- Fig. 2. Setting of the test.
val of 47.5 mm along the centerline of the back side of the
panel. The strain gauges on the outside of the midpoint of
the stiffeners were numbered s8 and s9, as shown in Fig. 3.

2.2 Measurement of the initial geometric imperfection

Initial geometrical imperfections caused by machining
and welding are unavoidable and have significant effects on
the ultimate strength and the failure mode of the stiffened
panels. Therefore, it is necessary to measure the geometric-
al initial imperfections. As discussed in the recent study (Xu
and Guedes Soares, 2012b), the displacement transducer
had been used to measure the distance between a reference
base plane and the plate surface. The measured initial im-
perfections of the plate were used directly in the FE analys-
Fig. 3. Strain gauges setting.
is. However, the initial imperfections of the plate were only
measured at very limited points in the plate and no initial
geometrical imperfections were measured on the stiffeners. mens were measured using three-dimensional (3D) laser
The device and the measured initial imperfections using that scanning technology and the 3D scanning device is given in
device (Xu and Guedes Soares, 2012b) were illustrated in Fig. 5a. Based on the principle of laser ranging, a large
Figs. 4a and 4b. number of points in the specimen surfaces were recorded
Herein, the initial geometric imperfections of the speci- with the information of three dimensional coordinates, re-

Fig. 4. Measurement device and results in reference (Xu and Guedes Soares, 2012b).
 YU Yang-zhe et al. China Ocean Eng., 2019, Vol. 33, No. 4, P. 446–458 449

Fig. 5. Scanning device and initial imperfection scanning results before test (unit: mm).

flectivity and texture. By using the software Geomagic
Spark, the recorded points in surfaces of the specimens were
analyzed and digitally generated (Two specimens were
tested and named A and B respectively). The initial deform-
ations of the panel and the stiffeners described by the recor-
ded points of Specimens A and B were respectively given in
Figs. 5b and 5c. The results of 3D scanning measurement
obviously have a higher precision than those in Fig. 4b.
Moreover, 3D scanning is especially suitable for the meas-
urement in situ because there is no need to deploy displace-
ment transducers or to build a reference plane.
It can be seen that the initial geometrical imperfections
of the two specimens are irregular. The maximum initial de-
formation for panel of Specimen A is smaller than that of
Specimen B. The maximum initial deformation for the pan-
el occurred in the middle bay for both specimens. Manufac-
turing caused the initial side-way deformation in the stiffen-
ers. The maximum side-way deformation of Specimen A is
a little greater than that of Specimen B. For Specimen A, the
side-way deformation of one stiffener is obviously greater
than that of the other. However, the side-way deformation
of both stiffeners is similar to each other for Specimen B.
On the whole, Specimen B has relatively larger initial de-
formation than Specimen A, which causes an adverse effect
on the ultimate strength of Specimen B.
The initial deformation results by 3D scanning are easy
to be imported to the finite element analysis software. The
inverse processing is first carried out by using the software
Geomagic Control. Geomagic Control will create the geo-
metrical surface of the specimen through the points in the
surface of the specimen recorded by the software Geomagic
Spark. And then, the geometrical surface generated by the
software Geomagic Control can be converted into the finite
element model with the software Hypermesh. In this way,
the initial geometrical imperfections of both the plate and
the stiffener of the specimens were restored and were fur-
ther imported into the finite element analysis software for
numerical analysis. Details about mesh in FEM analysis can
be found in Section 3.2. The basic idea of the 3D scanning
technology and how to make the model available in the
FEM analysis is given in Fig. 6.
2.3 Experimental results
The ultimate strength test was carried out in three load-
ing cycles. The first two cycles were designed to release the
residual welding stress of the specimen, and eliminate any
possible gap between the specimen and the test setup. The
last loading cycle aimed to get the ultimate strength, as well
as the buckling and post-buckling behavior of the stiffened
plate. It should be noted that the first two loading cycles
should be adequately large so as to effectively release the
residual stress and eliminate the gap, but keep the stiffened

Fig. 6. Basic idea of the 3D scanning method for FE analysis.

450 YU Yang-zhe et al. China Ocean Eng., 2019, Vol. 33, No. 4, P. 446–458

plates in an elastic structural response state. Such experi-

mental procedure has been widely used, as can be found in
Xu and Guedes Soares (2013a, 2013b, 2013c).
In the experiment, the first loading cycle was 0
kN→100 kN→0 kN and the second loading cycle was 0
kN→150 kN→0 kN. The load-displacement curves of Spe-
cimen A during the experiment were obtained, as shown in
Fig. 7. At the end of the first cycle, the axial displacement
did not return to zero, which indicates that there are gaps
between the specimen and the loading device. However, the
load curves in the 2nd and 3rd cycles were almost the same Fig. 7. Load-displacement curve of Specimen A.
at the initial loading stages, which illustrates that the gaps
between the specimen and the loading device are elimin-
ated and the response of the specimen is in an elastic stage. the stiffened plate reached the limit state. The strains of
The ultimate strength of Specimen A is 351.47 kN. It can s8–s9 changed rapidly compared with those of the panel and
also be found that there is a sudden decline in the load-dis- the values were significantly greater than those on the panel.
placement curve. This is due to the tripping buckling of the The strain of s8 achieved the record limit at the imposed
stiffener that had large initial side-way deformation. displacement of 3.85 mm before the ultimate state of speci-
The strain–displacement curves in the final loading men A. The strain of s9 also achieved the record limit as
cycle are given in Fig. 8a for strain gauges on the panel and soon as the specimen reached the limit state. As can be seen
Fig. 8b for those on the stiffeners. All the strain gauges used in Fig. 8b, the strain of s8 changes more severely than that
in the test are unidirectional gauges and the measured of s9, and it is attributed to the stiffener with s8 having
strains represent the axial strains. All strains started from greater initial deformation than that of s9, as noted in the
zero in the final cycle, which indicates that the first two initial deformation measurement. The stiffener with the
loading cycles are in the elastic range. The strains of s1–s7 greater initial deformation entered a buckling state earlier,
shared the same pattern. At the beginning of the loading, the which leaded to a sudden falling of the load-bearing capa-
strains of s1–s7 were negative due to the compression, until city for the stiffened plate, as shown in Fig. 7.

Fig. 8. Strain–displacement curves in the final loading cycle of Specimen A.

The load-displacement curves for Specimen B were ex-

perimentally obtained, as shown in Fig. 9. The first loading
cycle was 0 kN→100 kN→0 kN and the second loading
cycle was 0 kN→150 kN→0 kN. During the first two load-
ing cycles, the trends of the curves were almost the same,
which indicates that the deformation of the specimen is
within the elastic range, and little gap exists in the test
setup. The ultimate force achieved was 337.04 kN when the
displacement reached 4.18 mm. For Specimen B, no sud-
den buckling of local structure occurred, such as the trip-
ping failure of the stiffener, as found in Specimen A. As
Specimen B having relatively larger general deformation
than Specimen A, the ultimate strength of Specimen B is Fig. 9. Load–displacement curve of Specimen B.
 YU Yang-zhe et al. China Ocean Eng., 2019, Vol. 33, No. 4, P. 446–458
smaller than that of Specimen A.
The strain displacement curves in the final loading cycle
of Specimen B were experimentally obtained, as shown in
Fig. 10. All the strains in the third loading cycle started
from zero, which means that the loads in the previous load-
ing cycles were big enough to release the residual stress and
no plastic deformation was induced. The strains (s1–s7) in
the middle of the panel shared the same trends, which were
first negative and then positive. The negative values indic-
ate that the panel was in compression, while with the in-
crease of the axial load, the panel began to deform. The de-
formation induced the back of the panel in tension and
Fig. 10. Strain-displacement curves during the final loading cycle of Specimen B.
The 3D laser scanning method was used again after the
panels collapsed and the measured deformation was com-
pared with the tested ones, as shown in Fig. 11 and Fig. 12.
It is obvious that the 3D scanning technology can record
Fig. 11. Final deformation of Specimen A.
Fig. 12. Final deformation of Specimen B.
451
therefore the strain values became positive. After collapse,
the strains increased rapidly until the end of the test. The
trends of the strain-displacement curves are similar for s8
and s9, especially at the beginning of the curves, because
the initial deformation of the stiffeners is alike. The vari-
ations in the initial geometrical imperfections between the
two stiffeners eventually lead to a difference in the latter
part of the strain displacement curves. It is obvious that the
strain on the stiffener was much larger than that of the pan-
el before the specimen failed. The strains of the stiffeners
achieved the record limit at the imposed displacement of 2.8
mm and 3.6 mm, respectively.
and represent the shape of the specimen regardless whether
the specimen deformed or not. It is found that the failure
mode of the two specimens can be classified as the stiffener-
induced failure. The scanned deformation of the stiffened
panels is compared with that attained by the finite element
analysis in Section 4.
3 Nonlinear finite element analysis for ultimate strength
calculation
3.1 Finite element model
Based on the ABAQUS software package, the four-node
shell element S4R with six degrees of freedom at each node
and five integration points along the thickness was applied
to build the FE model. It accounts for both linearity and
nonlinearity of large rotations and strains. Both full and re-
duced integration schemes are supported (Shi and Wang,
2012a, 2012b; AbuBakar and Dow, 2013). Riks method was
employed to investigate the ultimate strength of the
stiffened plates. This method is based on the solution of the
structural nonlinear static equilibrium equation and tracks
the load-displacement equilibrium path of the structure dur-
ing loading and unloading (ABAQUS, 2004).
The mesh of the FE model should be fine enough to give
accurate and reliable results. Convergence analysis of mesh
size was carried out (Ghavami and Khedmati, 2006). The
element sizes chosen were 15 mm, 10 mm and 5 mm in the
convergence study, and the ultimate strength of the stiffened
plate were 352.2 kN, 351.6 kN and 350.7 kN, respectively.
452 YU Yang-zhe et al. China Ocean Eng., 2019, Vol. 33, No. 4, P. 446–458

The ultimate strength of the stiffened plate was convergent
when the mesh size was 10 mm, as shown in Fig. 13. In this
paper, to restore the measured initial geometric imperfec-
tion in detail, a mesh size of 5 mm was chosen.
where a is the length of the plate of one bay, b is the width
of the plate of one bay, m is the number of buckling half
waves which can be predicted as a minimum integer satisfy-
ing Eq. (6), which is 2 in this paper, hw is the height of the
stiffener.
In addition, the 3D scanning technology was used to
measure the initial deformation of the stiffened plate. The
initial surfaces of the specimens were created by Geomagic
Control and then was imported into Hypermesh to generate
the model mesh used in the FE analysis. The model of the
plate and stiffeners with the measured initial imperfections
was amplified 8 times, as can be seen in Fig. 14, where the
mesh was set to be invisible and the deformation pattern of
the specimens was irregular.

3.3 Material properties

Fig. 13. Convergence analysis of mesh size. The influences of the material hardening on the ultimate
strength and behavior of collapse of the stiffened panel were
3.2 Initial geometric imperfection investigated by ISSC (2009). The ideal elastic-plastic mater-
The initial geometric imperfections determine the final ial model has also been widely used in the FE analysis, es-
deformation and the ultimate strength of the stiffened plates. pecially for complicated structures (Yu et al., 2017). To
Thus, it is of great importance to consider the initial geo- consider the effect of the material nonlinearity and accur-
metric imperfections in the FE analysis. In this paper, two ately replicate the behavior of collapse of the stiffened
methods were adopted to account for the initial geometric plates in the FE analysis, a group of tension tests were con-
imperfections. ducted to evaluate the material properties of steel AH36, as
One commonly used method in the simulation of the ini- shown in Fig. 15. The velocity of the imposed displacement
tial geometric deformation is to present the initial deforma- was 0.15 mm/s and the force-displacement data were recor-
tion as a trigonometric function. The equivalent initial de- ded during the process. The material properties obtained
formation of the stiffened plates as expressed from Eq. (3) were as follows: the yielding stress 418.15 MPa, the
to Eq. (5) (Zhang and Khan, 2009). All the assumed equi- Young’s modulus E = 192486 N/mm2 and Poisson’s ratio
valent amplitudes in the following equations were on the av- ν = 0.3. The obtained true stress-strain curve was used in the
erage level. FE analysis.
Column-type initial deformation of the panel:
πx 3.4 Boundary conditions
ω0c = −0.0015a cos . (3)
a The boundary conditions in the finite element analysis
Deformation of local panel plate: should reproduce the actual constraint of the test. Before
mπx πy analysis, the enforced displacement was applied to the load-
ω0pl = 0.1β2 tp sin cos . (4)
a b ing edges to make up for the deformation caused by the
Side-way deformation of the stiffeners: loading device during assembly. In the analysis, all degrees
z πx of freedom except the axial displacement were constrained
ω0s = 0.0015a sin ; (5) for the loading edge. Enforced displacement was applied at
hw a
√ the reference point to simulate the axial load. For the con-
a/b ⩽ m(m + 1), (6) straint of the frames, the clevis was modeled and tied to the

Fig. 14. Models with measured initial imperfections.

 YU Yang-zhe et al. China Ocean Eng., 2019, Vol. 33, No. 4, P. 446–458 453

Fig. 15. Stress-stain curves of the material AH36.

stiffened plate at the end of the frames. Tie is a kind of fric- from zero. The error of σa /σy obtained in the test and the FE
tion free contact connection in which the contact algorithm analysis is only 0.23%. Similar to the sudden decline of the
is activated if the contact occurs and is otherwise kept inact- normalized stress–strain curve for the test, the finite ele-
ive (ABAQUS, 2004). As in the test, the clevis was set to ment analysis result illustrates a rapid decline as the
constrain the rotation around the x axis and the translation stiffened panel reaches the ultimate state. It demonstrates
along the y axis in the FEA. Because of the gaps between that the stiffener buckling is identified in the FEA.
the stiffened panel and the clevis, the translation along the z After testing, the 3D scanning technology was used
axis and rotation around the y axis were free. All the bound- again to monitor the deformation of the specimen. Thus, the
ary conditions in the FEA were defined as shown in Fig.16, displacement distribution of the specimen can be obtained
where Ux, Uy and Uz indicate the translation along coordin- through the comparison of the surfaces created by 3D scan-
ate axes x, y and z, and R x , R y and R z denote the rotation ning before and after the test, as shown in Fig. 18. It can be
around the corresponding coordinate axis. seen that the middle bay of Specimen A deformed away
from the stiffeners during test. This failure mode is classi-
4 Comparisons of results and discussions fied as stiffener-induced failure (SIF) (Paik and Thayam-
balli, 2003).
4.1 Results of Specimen A
The normalized stress-strain curves obtained in the FE
analysis and the test for Specimen A are shown in Fig. 17.
εN (εa /εu ) is defined as the ratio of the simultaneous panel
strain (εa ) to the panel strain of the limit state (εu ), where the
panel strain is defined as the axial displacement by the
length of the stiffened panel. σa /σy is defined as the ratio of
the mean stress in the stiffened panel to the yielding stress
of the material. A more gradual growth of σa /σy at the be-
ginning of loading in the test is due to the rearrangement of
the test setup until every part of the panel, support and hy-
draulic machine were in full contact. The phenomenon also
explains the reason that εN obtained in the test did not start
Fig. 17. Normalized stress–strain curves by test and FE analysis of Speci-
men A.

Fig. 16. Boundary conditions in the FE analysis. Fig. 18. Displacement distribution in test (unit: mm).
454 YU Yang-zhe et al. China Ocean Eng., 2019, Vol. 33, No. 4, P. 446–458
The relative deformation, defined as the deformation rel-
ative to the maximum deformation of the stiffened panel, for
the panel of Specimen A was obtained by 3D scanning and
FEA respectively, as shown in Fig. 19a for test and Fig. 19b
for FE analysis. The displacement distribution of the panel
of Specimen A during the test and FE analysis kept the
Fig. 19. Deformation by test and FE analysis of Specimen A.
The relative deformation for d1–d3 at the final load step
of the test was extracted and compared with those in the FE
analysis, as shown in Fig. 20. The errors of d1 and d3 are
smaller than 1% while the error of d2 is 5.70%, which indic-
ates that the results of the FE analysis are credible and
highly accurate.
The side-way deformation of the stiffeners was attained
by 3D scanning and FEA as well, as shown in Fig. 21. It can
be found that the results of the FEA are quite close to the
Fig. 20. Comparison of deformation at the measuring points between test
and FE analysis for Specimen A.
Fig. 21. Comparison of side-way deformation between test and FE analysis for Specimen A.
same pattern, as can be seen in Fig. 19. Although the speci-
men was symmetrically designed, the displacement distribu-
tion did not keep symmetry due to the irregular initial de-
formation. Compared with Fig. 5a, it can be seen that the
maximum displacement of the panel occurred at the same
place where the maximum initial geometric imperfection was.
ones obtained via 3D scanning. The buckling of the stiffen-
er with the greater initial deformation can be identified both
in the FEA and in 3D scanning, as noted in the initial de-
formation measurement. However, the maximum side-way
deformation of the stiffener occurred in the middle bay of
the stiffened panel for both the test and FEA, instead of the
position where the initial maximum imperfection occurred.
This can be explained as the deformation is governed by the
stiffener induced failure of the stiffened panel, where the
maximum deformation will appear in the middle of the
stiffened panel.
4.2 Results of Specimen B
The normalized stress–strain curve for Specimen B was
obtained by FE analysis and compared with the one from
the test, as shown in Fig. 22. In the test, the reaction load
first increased almost linearly with the increase of the axial
displacement. Then, the reaction load rose slowly as εN ex-
ceeded 0.49. Different from that in the test, the curve of the
FE analysis grew linearly with the increase of the displace-
ment before it reached its maximum. The ultimate stress ra-
tio of the stiffened plate was 0.38 in the FE analysis, 1.93%
smaller than that in test. The curves declined gradually as
the stiffened panel reached its ultimate state. This is due to
 YU Yang-zhe et al. China Ocean Eng., 2019, Vol. 33, No. 4, P. 446–458 455

the similar initial deformation of the stiffeners, and the facts

that the external loads could be carried evenly by the two
stiffeners without sudden collapse of any one stiffener, as
was found for Specimen A. It can be seen from Fig. 5 that
the initial geometric imperfections of Specimen B are lar-
ger than that of Specimen A, and the ultimate strength of
Specimen B is smaller than that of Specimen A.
The displacement distribution of Specimen B was measu-
red by 3D scanning, as shown in Fig. 23. Similar to Specimen A,
the middle bay of Specimen B deformed away from the stiffen-
ers during test. The failure mode can also be regarded as SIF.
Fig. 22. Normalized stress–strain curves by test and FE analysis of Speci-
The comparison of the relative deformation between the men B.
test and the FEA is illustrated in Fig. 24. The measured de-
formation of the stiffened plate almost had the same pattern
as the calculated one, except in the small areas on the upper
right and left bottom of the stiffened plate. The ratios of the
displacements of d1–d3 to the maximum displacement at the
final load step of test were compared with those in the FE
analysis, as shown in Fig. 25. The errors in deformation for
d1–d3 are 0.81%, 2.43% and 4.23%, respectively. The dis-
placement distributions and the deformation at the measur-
ing points are in agreement with the experimental ones. Fig. 23. Displacement distribution in test (unit: mm).

Fig. 24. Deformation by test and FE analysis of Specimen B.

tern of the side-way deformation in the stiffener after the

test is similar to that in the initial state except for those in
the area of the end bay. Because of the constrained bound-
ary conditions, the stiffeners in the end bay have barely de-
formed in the test or the FEA.

4.3 Results of Specimens C and D

Fig. 25. Comparison of deformation at the measuring points between test
and FE analysis for Specimen B.
The normalized side-way deformation in the test was
compared with those in FEA, as shown in Fig. 26. It can be
seen that the FEA result agrees with the test one. The pat-
The finite element model with the initial deformation
described by Eqs. (3)–(5) is named as Specimen C, as sho-
wn in Fig. 27a. The maximum initial displacement of this sti-
ffened plate is 2.01 mm, which is smaller than that of Specime-
ns A and B. Compared with Fig. 5, the initial deformation
of Specimen C is quite different from those of the other two.
Specimen D is the finite element model with the average ini-
tial deformation of Specimen A and Specimen B, as shown in
Fig. 27b. It can be seen that the maximum initial deforma-
tion of Specimen D is a little larger than that of Specimen C.
456 YU Yang-zhe et al. China Ocean Eng., 2019, Vol. 33, No. 4, P. 446–458
Fig. 26. Comparison of side-way deformation between test and FE analysis for Specimen B.
Fig. 27. Initial geometric imperfection of Specimens C and D (unit: mm).
The normalized stress-strain curves of Specimens C and
D are similar to the other two specimens, as shown in Fig. 28.
Although the maximum initial imperfection in Specimen C
is smaller than Specimens A, B and D, the ultimate strength
of Specimen C is slightly smaller than the others, as shown
in Fig. 29. Because the initial imperfections of Specimen C
Fig. 28. Normalized stress–strain curve by FE analysis of Specimens C
and D.
Fig. 29. Comparison of ultimate strength of all specimens in test and FE
analysis.
are simulated as a trigonometric function, there are several
buckling half waves in both longitudinal and transversal dir-
ections. This kind of initial deformation is more regular in
comparison with the measured ones and obviously causes a
decrease in the structural stiffness according to the theory of
the structural stability. The ultimate strength of Specimen D,
with a mean statistical value generated from the initial de-
formation of Specimens A and B, is at the same level as
those of Specimens A and B. Although only two specimens
were measured, it has to be noted that the statistical values
of the initial deformation are of significance in the ultimate
strength assessment if a large number of stiffened panels are
measured. 3D scanning becomes a powerful tool in making
the detailed measurement of the initial deformation in the
stiffened panel.
4.4 Comparisons of the results
Further comparisons of the numerical and experimental
results with other literatures, i.e., Common Structural Rules
and the empirical formula were carried out, as shown in
Table 1. The ultimate strength is quantified as the ratio of
the ultimate stress of the specimens to the yielding stress of
the material, 418.15 MPa, in which σtA and σtB are respect-
ively the test results of Specimens A and B, σFA , σFB, σFC,
and σFD are respectively the FEA results of Specimens A,
B, C and D, σR is the result by Common Structural Rules
(IACS, 2018) as shown in Eq. (7) and σE is the result by the
empirical formula (Paik and Thayamballi, 2003) as shown
in Eq. (8).
As−n50 + ApE−n50
σR = Φσc1 , (7)
As−n50 + Ap−n50
where, Φ is the edge function, σc1 is the critical stress,
As−n50 is the net sectional area of stiffener without attached
 YU Yang-zhe et al. China Ocean Eng., 2019, Vol. 33, No. 4, P. 446–458
Table 1 Ultimate stress of stiffened panels
σtA σtB σFA σFB
0.41 0.39 0.41 0.38
plating, ApE−n50 is the net sectional area of attached plating
of effective width, Ap−n50 is the net sectional area of at-
tached plating.
1 tified using the 3D scanning measurement. Owing to the
σE = √ , (8)
0.995 + λ2e 0.936 + 0.179β2 + 0.188λ2e β2 − 0.067λ4e
where, λe is the effective column slenderness ratio, β is the
plate slenderness ratio.
It can be seen that the ultimate strength, with the equi-
valent initial geometrical imperfections in FEA, is the smal-
lest one, while the ultimate stress calculated by IACS is the
biggest one. By calculating the ultimate strength using the
IACS regulations, the one bay length is used to describe the
column bucking deformation of the stiffened plate.
However, in the test, the final bucking wave in the axial dir-
ection is longer than the one bay length. The initial imper-
fection is not considered in the regulations. This may ex-
plain why the ultimate strength using the IACS calculations
is the largest. The smallest ultimate strength with the equi-
valent initial imperfection can be attributed to relatively
small structural stiffness induced by the equivalent initial
imperfection described in the trigonometric model. The ulti-
mate strength obtained from the FEA with the measured ini-
tial imperfections is close to the ones in the tests and can be
further verified by way of the empirical formula.
5 Conclusions
The ultimate strength tests of the stiffened panels made
of AH36 under axial load, with clamped boundaries at both
ends of the panel and a restrained boundary on the trans-
verse frames, were performed. The FE analysis using the
measured initial imperfections and the equivalent initial im-
perfections were carried out and compared with the test res-
ults. The following conclusions can be derived from this
study.
The initial geometric imperfection, which has great in-
fluence on the ultimate strength of the stiffened panel, can
be easily measured in detail using 3D scanning technology,
in contrast to the conventionally used deformation measur-
ing transducers. The 3D scanning is especially suitable for
the measurement of the structural deformation in situ. The
measurement results can also be incorporated into the finite
element model of the stiffened panel, convenient for the
subsequent nonlinear finite element analysis. A kind of test
setup for the ultimate strength of the stiffened panel was de-
veloped and the tests were successfully carried out with it.
The numerical model was built based on the finite element
analysis. With the initial deformation considered, the nu-
merical results of the ultimate strength of the stiffened pan-
el, based on the nonlinear finite element analysis, agree with
457
σFC σFD σR σE
0.33 0.38 0.61 0.42
those obtained by testing. The different deformation pat-
terns shown by Specimens A and B can be attributed to the
different initial geometrical imperfections that may be quan-
large tripping deformation of one stiffener, Specimen A suf-
fers a sudden buckling of the stiffener in the ultimate state,
which is identified in the finite element analysis. The ulti-
mate load-bearing capacity descends gradually after reach-
ing the ultimate state for Specimen B as the two stiffeners
have similar initial deformation. Both Specimens A and B
present stiffener induced failure of the stiffened panel. The
deformation after collapse, achieved by FEA, is consistent
with the measured one. Although, the magnitude of the
equivalent initial imperfections is smaller than that of the
measured, the ultimate strength of Specimen C is reason-
ably small as the structural stiffness obviously decreases due
to the assumed initial geometric imperfection of the trigono-
metric function. With the help of 3D scanning, the statistic-
al values, for example the mean value, of the initial geomet-
rical imperfections are attained conveniently and trans-
ferred to the FE model for the ultimate strength analysis. Al-
though only two specimens were tested, it can be assumed
that the statistical analysis of the initial geometric imperfec-
tions can be accomplished if sufficient numbers of stiffened
panels are measured using 3D scanning technology and can
be applied in the ultimate strength assessment.
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