KOITERʹS ANALYSIS OF THIN-WALLED STRUCTURES BY A FINITE ELEMENT APPROACH

This paper refers to the analysis of the postbuckling behaviour of thin-walled structures by means of an asymptotic approach based on a finite element implementation of Koiter’s non-linear theory of instability. The analysis has been accomplished by using the following assumptions: (i) the structure is described as an assemblage of flat slender rectangular panels; (ii) a non-linear Kirchhoff-type plate theory is used to model each panel; (iii) HC finite elements discretization is used; (iv) linear and quadratic extrapolations are assumed for the fundamental and the postbuckling paths, respectively; (v) multimodal buckling is considered; and (vi) imperfection sensitivity analysis is performed in both multimodal and monomodal form based on the steepest-descent path criterion. Several numerical results are presented and discussed. Comparisons with numerical solution obtained by standard incremental codes are given, which show the accuracy and reliability of the proposed approach.