Buckling resistance of longitudinally stiffened panels with closed stiffeners under direct longitudinal stresses

The buckling behaviour of panels may be determined according to EN 1993-1-5 [1]. Most of the design rules relating to stiffened panels in EN 1993-1-5 were derived on the basis of open-section stiffeners. Several recent investigations have shown that the application of the design rules according to EN 1993-1-5 considering the torsional stiffness of the stiffeners may overestimate the resistance of the panels. Therefore, the recent Amendment A2 to EN 1993-1-5 states that the torsional stiffness of stiffeners should generally be neglected in determining critical plate buckling stresses. In addition, prEN 1993-1-5 [2] provides rules for considering the torsional stiffness of stiffeners. However, in this article it is shown that even the rules of prEN 1993-1-5 are not sufficient to overcome the safety deficiencies. The article focuses on the investigation of the buckling behaviour of stiffened panels with closed-section stiffeners subjected to constant longitudinal compression stresses. Improved rules have been developed that allow to consider the torsional stiffness of the stiffeners. Based on an extensive numerical parametric study, a new interpolation equation between column- and plate-like behaviour is proposed. In comparison to [3], the investigations have been extended to the effective width method. They show that the proposal provides a safe and economic solution for the reduced stress method and the effective width method when considering the torsional stiffness of stiffeners by calculating the critical plate buckling stresses.