Basic Analysis of Skew Plates with Openings

Abstract

Skew plates are important elements of many structures. The two-dimensional structural action of plates results in lighter structures and therefore offer numerous economic advantages. Their application is extensive in fields of engineering such as: civil, mechanical, architecture, and aerospace. Openings of various shapes are made in the skew plates for practical reasons. Unfortunately, this results in strength degradations. Accordingly, there is a basic need to evaluate the structural behavior of these plates with some commonly used openings for a safe design. However, due to the mathematical difficulties in the analytical approaches and complex work involved in the various techniques, the extraction of solutions become challenging and cumbersome. Therefore, this basic work attempts to resolve this in a simplified and user-friendly manner using MSC (MacNeal-Schwendler Corporation) Nastran software. Five commonly used openings were used for the study, namely: circular, rectangular, square, triangular, and trapezoidal. It was found that rectangular opening is the best. Since it is susceptible to less deflections, rotations and moments when compared to other openings.