Strengthening effects of stiffeners on arbitrarily stiffened plates and regularly stiffened plates subject to biaxial stress

► This paper studies effects of arbitrarily oriented and regularly oriented stiffener.
► A method of finding equivalent regular stiffened plate is presented.
► The current semi-analytical model for the arbitrarily stiffened plate is simplified.

A hypothesis that when subject to biaxial stress, the strengthening effects of arbitrarily oriented stiffener can be approximated by those of regularly oriented stiffener is proved through several simulations and comparisons. It is also found that in an arbitrarily stiffened plate with multiple stiffeners, the orientation of the stiffeners does not apparently affect the plate's strength limit. Based on this find, any arbitrarily stiffened plate can be simplified as regularly stiffened plate, therefore can be analyzed through simplified semi-analytical models during buckling strength analysis. The proved hypothesis can also be explained from an existing analytical model for the arbitrarily oriented stiffener. Engineering simulation software ANSYS is used for modeling and analysis involved in this study.