Buckling of Steel Conical Panels Reinforced with Stiffeners

Conical shells and their panels are important elements of building structures, but have not been studied sufficiently. This paper explores buckling of truncated steel conical panels reinforced with an orthogonal grid of stiffener plates. The panels are simply supported and are subjected to external uniformly distributed transverse load acting normal to the surface. A geometrically nonlinear mathematical model that takes into account lateral shearing is used. Two options of describing the effect of stiffener plates are considered: the refined discrete method and the method of structural anisotropy (the stiffness of the plates is “smeared”). The computational algorithm is based on the Ritz method and the method of continuing the solution using the best parameter. The algorithm is implemented using Maple analytical computing software. The values of critical buckling loads were obtained for two cases of conical panels with different stiffener options. The load-deflection curves are presented. The convergence of the methods for describing the effect of stiffeners with the increase in their number is discussed. It was found that for conical panels, when choosing a small number of unknown coefficients in the approximation, the value of the critical load may be “overshot”, and it is necessary to select a larger number of unknowns compared to cylindrical panels or flat shells of double curvature.