Description: Plates are simple two-dimensional structural elements and main load bearing component in many applications. But frequently as needed, they are appended and strengthened with beam like stiffener components that are combined referred as stiffened plates. The stiffeners, by considerably increasing the bending stiffness of the plates, enable them to sustain high transverse loads with least material addition. Hence, accurate structural analysis of such stiffened plates, prior to their effective design, is of practical requirement to use them in the best possible way.The finite element method (FEM) being possibly the most versatile and robust amongst such numerical methods, is at the forefront of these researches, including the present one. Amongst the different modified versions of the FEM developed so far by the research community, the relatively recently developed Isogeometric FE analysis (IGA) method is being considered as one of the most promising.The IGA has the potential to integrate the computer aided design (CAD) and the FE analysis into a single platform / software by way of using common basis functions, besides increasing the analysis accuracy and efficiency.
