Compressive strength assessment of rectangular steel plates with a local dent or an opening

As a result of ship grounding, collision and dropped objects, an indentation, or large plastic deformation may occur with different shapes and sizes, which in turn may affect the local and global structural behaviour. One of the first studies in this field is the one of Dow & Smith (1984), who presented a numerical study of the buckling and post-buckling behaviour of long rectangular plates under uniaxial longitudinal compression with localized initial deformation.