Comparison between Stiffened Plate and Steel Aluminum Foam Sandwich Panels5

In civil structures, lot of attention is paid to lightweight design i.e., reduction in selfweight by design without compromising safety, integrity, and performance of a structure. The structure should also be cost-effective. Thanks to modern steel aluminum foam sandwich panel manufacturing technology a new possibility has become available for lightweight design. In this study, efforts were made to replace the stiffened plate by the sandwich panel with the aim of weight reduction. For this task, three different sandwich panels were selected, a sandwich panel made with faceplates S355, S690 and S1100. In this study, an arbitrary Huisman equipment was chosen which is made of S355 stiffened plate. This structure is redesigned with sandwiches S355, S690 and S1100. Static and buckling analysis is done on the new design. Also, Cost analysis is performed, to evaluate if the sandwich panel is an economical solution. The findings of the study aim to find out if it is possible to use sandwich panels to save significant amounts of weight while taking other considerations into account. Weight reduction of up to 30% can be achieved with the use of sandwich panels. The application of sandwich panels results in increases in the cost of the structure.