| In the last two decades, the Finite Element Method has been growing as a powerful tool for the structural analysis of the ship hull, but in nautical construction the use of this method has been related mainly to steel or aluminium hulls. In a metallic structure the material is homogeneous and isotropic and the plate, or the stiffened plate, behaves as an orthotropic plate, which means orthogonally anisotropic with three mutually perpendicular planes of symmetry; on the contrary, when considering a composite hull panel the scheme ought to be different, because there arise two different problems, which ensue from the structural characteristics of the composite sandwich panel. Firstly, the Element Stiffness Matrix must take into account the natural anisotropy... |
