Experimental and Numerical Studies on the Shear Stability of Ship’s Thin Plates

The stability of thin plate plays an important role in the design and strength check of ship structure. In order to study the shear stability of ship’s thin plates, in-plane shear buckling tests were carried out using a picture frame fixture and a 3D full-field strain measurement system. The critical buckling load, full-field displacement/strain information, and load-displacement curve were obtained. The finite element model with the frame fixture was established based on ABAQUS, with the eigenvalue buckling analysis and nonlinear buckling analysis being carried out to obtain the mechanical response information of the buckling and post-buckling of the ship’s thin plate. The effectiveness and accuracy of the numerical simulation method are verified by comparing the numerical simulation with the experimental results. On this basis, the critical buckling load obtained by shear test, numerical simulation, and theoretical calculation is analyzed, and the function of the frame shear fixture and its influence on the critical buckling load are defined. The research in this paper provides a useful reference for the testing and simulation of in-plane shear stability of ship’s thin plates.