Improving Plate Performance Under Dynamic and Axial Loads Through Pre-Formed Pyramidal Structures: A Numerical Method

Abstract

This study presents a harnessed optimization process of pre-built pyramidal modifications at enhancing the response of AISI 1010 steel planar plates subjected to simultaneous axial-dynamic loading. Unlike conventional mass adding reinforcements for enhancing buckling resistance and vibration stability. ANSYS finite element analysis featured 25 plate arrangements (pyramid heights: 0 to 20 mm; thicknesses: 1 to 3 mm), considering the boundary conditions as clamped and compression load. At increased distortion, results indicate a marked improvement in performance, particularly for thinner plates (≤2 mm). At maximum in case of deformation (h = 20 mm), critical buckling loads were improved up to 237.3%, and fundamental natural frequencies were enhanced up to 328%. The enhancements are linked to a transition from global buckling and vibration to localized modes: pyramidal regions concentrate stresses via shear band redistribution, significantly diminishing the uniformly stressed area, and limit vibrational energy by confining kinetic energy to geometric protrusions. The augmentation of performance diminishes with increasing plate thickness, exhibiting losses of 86% in buckling and 98% in frequency gains as thickness escalates from 1 mm to 3 mm. Saturation effects occur beyond h = 15 mm for thicker plates. This geometric morphing approach provides a resource-efficient transformation for lightweight structural construction.