ABSTRACT
The paper presents a general plate strength formulation applicable to metallic materials, notably metal plates with nonlinear stress strain curves, such as aluminium, stainless steel, cast iron, brass and titanium. The formulation is based on a generalised Winter-curve featuring two material-dependent constants. Analytic expressions are derived for these constants so that they can be determined for given material properties, assumed to be expressed in terms of the Ramberg-Osgood parameters.
The generalised plate strength formulation was derived by a) conducting a selected set of carefully instrumented tests on single stainless steel plates, b) developing accurate finite element models calibrated against the tests, c) using the calibrated finite element models to produce plate strength curves and d) fitting a generalised Winter equation to the finite element strength curves. The paper describes the details of this process, and demonstrates how the generalised formulation can be used to obtain the plate strength equation for a given alloy allows, requiring only the Ramberg-Osgood parameters.
