Empirical formulations for predicting the ultimate compressive strength of welded aluminum stiffened panels

The present study was undertaken by the support from Ship Structure Committee (http://www.shipstructure.org), a North American-based interagency research and development committee, in association with SR-1446 project, and also from Alcan Marine, France. Empirical expressions are developed for predicting the ultimate compressive strength of welded aluminum stiffened panels used for marine applications. Existing data of the ultimate compressive strength for aluminum stiffened panels experimentally and numerically obtained by the SR-1446 project is used for deriving the formulations which are expressed as functions of two parameters, namely the plate slenderness ratio and the column (stiffener) slenderness ratio. The formulae implicitly include the effects of weld induced initial imperfections, and softening in the heat affected zone.