Assessment of buckling behaviour on an FPSO deck panel

Stiffened plates are the main structural building block in ship and offshore hulls and their structural response subject to loads is a topic of significant practical interest in ship and offshore structural design. To investigate the structural capacity for design and evaluation purposes, it is becoming an efficient and reliable practice to carry out non-linear finite element (FE) analysis. The present study is to assess the buckling strength of a stiffened deck panel on an FPSO vessel using the nonlinear finite element code ADVANCE ABAQUS, where imperfection sensitivity work is also accounted for. The cases studied correspond to in-plane bi-axial compression in the two orthogonal directions. The findings are compared with the DNVGL PULS (Panel Ultimate Limit State) buckling code for the stiffened panels. It is found that the strength values from the ADVANCE ABAQUS and DNVGL PULS code are very close. The results and insights developed from the present work are discussed in detail.