Simulation of a crack in stiffened plates via a meshless formulation and FSDT

A meshless formulation for fracture analysis of stiffened plates is introduced. Based on an improved meshless model of stiffened plates proposed by the authors, in which flat plate and ribs are combined by implementing the displacement compatibility conditions between them, a crack is introduced by the diffraction method. Inheriting the meshless advantages from the model, the ribs in our formulation can be set at any location on the flat plate, and the remeshing of the flat plate is naturally avoided when rib location changes102