A PROCEDURE FOR NON-LINEAR STRUCTURAL COLLAPSE ANALYSIS

It is a normal practice nowadays in structural engineering, including ships and offshore industry, to perform non-linear finite element analysis to assess the structure's capacity for design or evaluation purposes. However, experience has shown that the quality and accuracy of the non-linear FE analysis results are highly dependent on the skill of the person perfouning the analysis and the analysis procedure used. The difference between results obtained by different people can be significant. In some cases, the results can be misleading. It is considered that a unified procedure is necessary. This paper is moving a step further and trying to develop a standard procedure which can provide a guideline for structural collapse analysis of stiffened panels under any load combinations. The paper provides the technical background on the analysis procedure and the key steps such as model extent, mesh density, initial imperfections, and boundary conditions. Analysis examples are provided in the paper for reference and discussions.