Ultimate Strength Analysis of Ring-stiffened Cylinders Using Commercial Softwares

상용소프트웨어를 이용한 원환보강 원통의 최종강도 해석(I)

Despite the increasing necessity of accurate estimation of ring-stiffened cylinders' ultimate strength, the complex structural behavior of cylinders has made their design mainly depend on empirical formulas mostly based on insufficient test data rather than theoretical background. This paper has developed the imperfection method which enables the ultimate strength analysis of buckling sensitive structures by combining two general functions of common commercial finite element softwares, linear elastic buckling analysis and nonlinear stress analysis. Developed method was applied to two of the world most renowned commercial softwares, MSC/NASTRAN and ABAQUS, for the analysis of ring-stiffened cylinders and unexpectedly big difference in their analysis results was found. This tells that many widely used commercial softwares has their different strong points and week points and the choice of commercial software should be cautiously made after thorough inspection. This paper ends with some useful information about which of the aforementioned two softwares is more appropriate respectively for linear elastic buckling analysis and ultimate strength analysis of ring-stiffened cylinders.