Metal members stiffened by bistable components for the protection of naval architectures under periodic loading

Naval architectures are required to simultaneously have high stiffness and high damping to bear periodic loading and suppress resonance that is possibly caused by ship self-excitation vibration. A protection approach, namely, metal members stiffened by bistable components, is proposed. This approach not only achieves high stiffness but also exhibits excellent energy dissipation compared to that of traditional approaches under periodic loading. A two-degree-of-freedom (2-DOF) model of a Euler beam stiffened by a bistable component is derived and characterised by two potential wells. The influence of the structural parameters and energy dissipation mechanisms of the coupled bistable-linear (CBL) beam on the laws of the potential energy wells are studied via theoretical model. In the end, a panel stiffened by optimally designed CBL beams, according to the parametric studies, effectively dissipate the dynamic energy and protect the structure by staying within the elastic range found in the finite element model (FEM).