Figure 1 illustrates a load diffusion problem which occurs in ship structural design, and which may also be relevant to aircraft structures. A load applied to one end of a stringer is diffused into the attached sheet and eventually reacted by shearing forces at the longitudinal edges. The transverse edges of the sheet and the other end of the stringer are not loaded.

Various methods, which differ in their assumptions regarding stresses and displacements in the sheet, are available for tackling this problem. For calculating the distribution of load or stress in the stringer it makes little difference which method is used. The “finite stringer” method of reference (1) is the simplest and should be sufficiently accurate for most cases.