Benchmarking of FE Post-Buckling Analysis of Stiffened Composite Panels with Experimental Validation

Abstract

Fibrous composites are now gradually replacing traditional steel and alloys in lightweight structural designs because of their unique weight/performance ratio and vast choice of mechanical properties. However, these composites may have no plastic deformation phase that is typical for metals, and therefore buckling load does not necessarily means ultimate load that stiffened composite panels can bear. Allowing stiffened composite panels to enter post-buckling state can significantly reduce weight of aircraft or other lightweight structures in the near future. This requires accurate and fast calculation methods for structural sizing and design optimization. The aim of current study is to benchmark commercially available non-linear finite element (FE) software capabilities for post-buckling analysis of stiffened composite panels. Thus several models have been created using ANSYS, ABAQUS and LS-DYNA FE packages and the analysis results have been experimentally validated. Evaluation of these modeling issues has been performed comparing accordance to experimental data, computational time and applicability for further optimization procedure with response surface method and design of computer experiments