Full-scale collapse testing of a steel stiffened plate structure under axial-compressive loading at a temperature of −80°C

Journal article, 2021

The aim of the paper was to develop a test database of the ultimate strength characteristics of full-scale steel stiffened plate structures under axial compressive loading at a temperature of −80°C. This paper is a sequel to the authors’ articles (Paik et al. 2020a, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.istruc.2020.05.026 and Paik et al. 2020b, https://doi.org/10.1080/17445302.2020.1787930). In contrast to the earlier articles associated with room temperature or cryogenic condition, this paper investigated the effect of a low temperature at −80°C which is within the boundary range of temperature of the ductile-to-brittle fracture transition for carbon steels. A material model representing the test conditions was also proposed to capture the characteristics of carbon steels at low temperatures both in tension and in compression, and it was used in finite element method simulations of the full-scale experiment. A comparison between numerical analyses and experiments showed that the proposed model could successfully predict the failure modes and ultimate strength characteristics at low temperatures for stiffened plate structures under axial compressive loading conditions.