... stiffened shells under a transverse punch load by using a local equilibrium approach. They reported good agreement with experimental data on short orthogonally stiffened tubes. Other approaches taken to solve this class of problem includes the use of non-linear fmite element and finite difference programs...

... are amenable to any kind of analytical or numerical treatment, but require instead some kind of empirical approach. The problem is made worse by the difficulties of obtaining reliable experimental data, of knowing how to scale the data, and of understanding the important parameters. In a conventional wave...