58-istam-sm-fp-46

Proceedings of 58th Congress of ISTAM (http://istam.iitkgp.ac.in) Held at : BESU Shibpur; Howrah, W.B. (www.becs.ac.in)

STRESSANALYSISOFCUTOUTPLATE
KanakKalitaandSalilHalder
Aerospace Engineering & Applied Mechanics Department Bengal Engineering and Science University, Howrah, WB Email: kanak_kalita@yahoo.co.in

Abstract: Plates are an integral part of engineering industry. Cutouts are made into plates
for various requirements. However these cutouts creates stress concentration and eventually reduces the mechanical strength of the structure. The present analysis, the variation of stresses with change in d/B (diameter of the circular cutout/ width of the rectangular plate) and b/B (side length of the square cutout/ width of the rectangular plate) ratio is investigated. Three different boundary conditions are considered in the present analysis. The results so obtained are presented in graphical form. In this paper stresses are mitigated by introduction of auxiliary holes around the main cutout. Reduction in stresses with symmetric auxiliary holes is studied. A popular finite element package ANSYS is used for the analysis.

Introduction: Plates are widely used for fabrication of structural components in various fields of engineering such as aerospace, marine, automobile and mechanical. It often becomes a practical necessity to have openings to provide access and services, reduce weight or for fastening plates by means of bolts or rivets. These openings alters the stress distribution in the vicinity of the cutouts and becomes stress raisers. These areas of high stress are called areas of stress concentration. Thus any such discontinuity in structure penetrates the strength of the structure. With ever increasing use of plates in the engineering industry it has become now more important than ever to understand the stress patterns in these plates and also to come up with techniques to reduce these stresses. Motok [1] carried out stress concentration studies on the contour of a plate opening of an arbitrary corner radius of curvature. Shanmugam [2] reviewed the effects of openings in plate elements subjected to uniaxial compression, biaxial compression and pure shear in stiffened plates, shear webs and cold formed steel sections. Zirkaet al. [3] analyzed stress concentration around circular hole in a rectangular plate for orthotropic and isotropic plates under dynamic and static loading by using photo elastic method. Tafreshi [4] presented work on stress analysis of a series of thick, wide, flat plates with oblique holes subjected to uniaxial tension and out-of-plane bending has been carried out using the finite element method (FEM), and in some cases the boundary element method (BEM). Kumar et al. [5] did a parametric study on different plate slenderness ratios and by varying the area ratio of opening to plate to determine the effect of ultimate strength on the size of rectangular opening. They found that increase in area ratio along the loading direction decreases the ultimate strength. Hasan [6] did stress analysis on steel plate having holes of various shapes, sizes and orientations using finite element method by the commercial software COMSOL. Meguid [7] presented a technique for reduction of SCF in a uni-axially loaded plate with two coaxial holes by introducing defense hole system- material removal in the form of circular holes. Defense hole system is a technique of material removal for stress mitigation using Finite
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element method. Mittal and Jain [8] proposed optimization of design of square simply supported isotropic plate with central circular hole subjected to transverse static loading by Finite Element Method. They have reported around 30% reduction in SCF. They proposed four auxiliary holes around circular hole in square plate. A further modification of work was carried out by optimization of auxiliary hole shape by giving elliptical shape to the auxiliary holes. Optimal hole shape for minimum stress concentration in two dimensional finite plates is given by Zhixue Wu [9]. Description of problem: A rectangular isotropic plate of 1500mm x 1000mm (A x B) is considered for study. Square cutouts of side b are provided at the center. The cutout width is varied from b/B ratio of 0.1 to 0.5. For circular cutout the radius of the circular cutout is varied from d/B ratio from 0.1 to 0.5. The material of the plate is isotropic with youngs modulus (E) 2x1011 N/m2 and Poissons ratio 0.3. Three Different boundary conditions are considered. Plate A: All sides are simply supported. Plate B: Left and right sides are fixed, other two are Fig.1 simply supported. Plate C: All sides are fixed. An 8 noded shell element, (specified as SHELL 281 in ANSYS) with element length of 2mm is used throughout the study (Fig.1). The element has eight nodes with six degrees of freedom at each node: translations in the x, y, and z axes, and rotations about the x, y, and zaxes (when using the membrane option, the element has translational degrees of freedom only). Thus each element has 48 degree of freedom in total. SHELL281 is well-suited for linear, large rotation, and large strain nonlinear applications. A mesh discretization of 30 x 30 was used for the analysis throughout. Results and discussion:

Fig.2

Fig.3

The results in graphical form are obtained by solving the various models in ANSYS. Fig.2 shows the variation of principal stress with respect to change in ratio of square cutout side length to the width of the plate b/B. Fig.3 shows the variation of principal stress with respect

to change in ratio of circular cutout diameter to the width of the plate d/B. As we go on increasing the ratio of thecutout dimension to plate dimension, reduction in stress is seen. In both type of cutout either square or circular the fall in principal stress is steeper in plate A. Though thebasic pattern of change in stress is same in all the cases. Principal stresses of the high stresspoints i.e. at the corner of the square cutout and at the diameter periphery for circular cutout is considered. Effect of fillet: It is a well-known technique to make fillets at the corners instead of sharp edges to mitigate stress. Fig. 4 shows the variation of principal stress as we go on increasing the fillet radius. Maximum stress reduction by fillets is seen in case of plate A and least in plate C. When fillet is first introduced there is a sharp reduction in stress but as we go on increasing the fillet radius the stress reduction effect eases out and after some time becomes constant. At Rf/b (fillet radius/square cutout side length) = 0.125 reduction in principal stress is about 20-25%. At Rf/b =0.25 the principal stress reduction is about 35%. Beyond Rf/b =0.3 principal stresses are in range of that of a circular opening. It is seen that principal stress is 40% less when Rf/b =0.375 compared to square cutout without fillet and about 3% less than circular opening.

Fig. 4: Distribution of principal stress with change in fillet radius. Effect of auxiliary holes: Fig. 5 illustrates the dimensions taken. All variation of distances of auxiliary holes from the periphery of the central cutout which are X1, X2, Y1 and radius of the auxiliary holes which are R1, r2 are taken as functions of side of the central cutout. Three different auxiliary hole sizes of 10mm, 20mm and 40mm (i.e. R1/side = 0.05, 0.1 and 0.2) are taken. Distance of the auxiliary holes is varied as distance/cutout side length ratio. Three methods of auxiliary hole placement are considered. One of our main concerns while placing the auxiliary holes is to keep their sizes minimum. Method 1: Two auxiliary holes with radius R1 are placed on either side of the main hole on y center line with variation in X1. Now the plate is symmetry having holes on both sides. Method 2: Four auxiliary holes are placed, two same as method 1 and other two with radius R1 at x center line with variation in Y1. Thus four symmetrical holes are placed all around the main hole. Method 3: Two more holes with radius R2 are placed around method 2 varying with distance X2.

Fig. 5 The results so obtained are presented below in graphical form. However here only limited amount of results for only plate C are shown. All plates (A, B and C) follow a more or less similar pattern.

Fig. 6 Fig. 6 shows the variation of principal stress with change in distance X1 for a radius R1=40mm. The dotted line shows the principal stress for plate C without using any stress reduction technique. When the auxiliary holes are placed very near the central hole the principal stresses in the plate C elevate. At a distance of 0.5 times of the side of the cutout (i.e. 100mm) stresses decrease by about 7% for method 1 and by about 12% using method 2 compared to Plate C without any auxiliary holes. When the distance X1 is increased to 1.5 times the side of the cutout (i.e. 300mm) stress is reduced by 3% for method 1 and about 6.5% using method 2. Two additional holes of radius R2 are placed on the y center line beyond the 1st set of auxiliary holes present in method 2 for R1=40mm and X1=100mm. The center to center distance between the 1st set auxiliary hole of radius R1 and 2nd set auxiliary hole of radius R2 is taken as X2. Variation of stress with change in distance X2 is observed. With the inclusion of a very small auxiliary hole with radius (R2) of 10mm or 20mm another 1%-2% reduction in stress is seen. It is also observed that the distance X2 has negligible effect on the stress. However if the radius R2 is large at very close proximity to the 1st set of auxiliary holes,
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stresses elevate but with increase in the distance between the two sets of auxiliary hole it decreases until it reaches a point beyond which X2 has no effect on stress. The least principal stress obtained is 108630 N/m2by using R2= 20mm with X2= 100mm.

Fig. 7 Conclusion: Any abrupt change in dimensions gives rise to high stresses around the discontinuity and change in stress flow lines is seen. Through gradual change in the structure reduction in these accumulated stresses is seen. In case of plates with central cutouts this can be achieved by drilling auxiliary holes around the main hole periphery. The distance should not be less than 0.5 times the dimension of the cutout. In general method 1 and method 2 seems to work better at cutout proximity of about 0.5 times the main cutout dimension. The removal of material by inclusion of auxiliary holes to reduce stress is practically more suitable for plate with infinite dimension due to sufficient availability of space and would lower the stress by significant amount. It is observed that symmetric auxiliary holes around the main hole has better stress reduction. Also if sufficient space is available, a second smaller set of auxiliary holes will further augment the stress reduction process. In our best case all the auxiliary holes combined together occupied an area of 56% of that of the cutout and only 1.5% of the plate area for a reduction of stress of more than 13.5%. References
1. 2. 3. 4. M. DMotok. Stress Concentration on the Contour of a Plate Opening of an Arbitrary Corner Radius of Curvature, Marine Structures, Vol. 10, No. 1, pp. 1-12, 1997. N.EShanmugam, Openings in Thin-Walled Steel Structures, Thin-Walled Structures, Vol. 28, No. 3-4, pp. 355-372, 1997 A.I. Zirka, M. P. Malezhik, and I. S. Chernyshenko, Stress distribution in an orthotropic plate with circular holes under impulsive loading, International applied mechanics, vol. 40, no. 2, and 2004. A. Tafreshi, Numerical analysis of stresses at oblique holes in plates subjected to tension and bending, Journal of strain analysis, vol. 30 no4, 1995, PP 317-323.


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M. Suneelkumar, p. Alagusundaramoorthy and R. Sundaravadivelu, ultimate strength of square plate with rectangular opening under axial compression Journal of naval architecture and marine engineering, June 2007. 6. T. Hasan, A. Das, T. Rahman, S. C. Chowdhury, and M. T. Alam, Stress analysis of steel plate having holes of various shapes, sizes and orientations using finite element method, Proceedings of the International Conference on Mechanical Engineering 2009 (ICME2009) Dhaka, Bangladesh, December 2009. 7. S. A. Meguid, Finite element analysis of defence hole systems for the reduction of stress Concentration in a uniaxiallyloaded plate with coaxial holes, Engineering Fracture Mechanics, vol. 25, no. 4, pp. 403-413, 1986. 8. N. D. Mittal and N. K. Jain, The optimize design of a square simply supported isotropic plate with central circular hole for reduction of stress concentration subjected to transverse static loading, Proceedings of ICTACEM, 2007. 9. Z. Wu, Optimal hole shape for minimum stress concentration using parameterized geometry models, Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization, vol. 37, no. 6, pp. 625-634, Feb, 2009. 10. Shubhrata Nagpal, Nitin Jain, and ShubhashishSanyal, Stress concentration and its mitigation techniques in flat plate with singularitiesa critical review Engineering journal volume 16 issue 1, 2012.