Ultimate Compressive Strength Assessment of Damaged Plates

This paper presents the assessment of the ultimate compressive strength of damaged steel plates with a local dent. The explicit nonlinear finite element code from ABAQUS program was employed to simulate dynamically the dent damage. Therefore, the residual stresses due to the damage were considered in subsequent numerical compression analyses. A parametric study of plates considering residual stresses, geometric imperfections and dents was accomplished. Results showed that local dent is the dominant parameter for the ultimate strength of damaged plates. For a particular dent depth, the effect of welding induced geometric imperfections and residual stresses can be disregarded from the analysis. Afterwards, analytical expressions were developed to estimate the ultimate strength of damaged plates.