Residual ultimate compressive strength of dented square plates

Thin steel plates are widely used in many structural applications because of its high load carrying capacity with less weight. The load carrying capacity of thin plates mainly depends on its buckling behavior which in turn is affected by the imperfections present in it. Dent is one of the common geometrical imperfections present in thin shell structures which may be formed due to mechanical damage caused by accidental loading or impact. In this work, influence of various dent parameters (dent length, dent width, dent depth and angle of orientation of the dent) on the static ultimate strength of thin square plates of different thicknesses under uniaxial compressive loading is studied. The dent is modeled on the FE surface of perfect thin square plate of size 1000 mm (of different thickness) for different sizes and angles of orientation of the dent at the center of the plate. These dented plates are analyzed using non-linear static buckling analysis of general purpose FE software ANSYS V12. From the results obtained, it is found that both shorter and longer dents reduce the ultimate strength drastically. But in case of shorter dents, variation of ultimate strength of dented plates due to variation of size and angle of orientation of dents is insignificant, whereas in the case of longer dents, size and angle of orientation of dents have significant effect. It is also found that the reduction in ultimate strength of thin plates with a dent of same size and orientation increases with increase in shell thickness.