Exact strip postbuckling analysis of composite plates under compression and shear

Abstract

ABSTRACTStiffened wing and fuselage panels often have a postbuckling reserve of strength, enabling them to carry loads far in excess of their critical buckling loads. Therefore allowing for postbuckling in design can reduce their weight, hence reducing fuel consumption and environmental impact. The present paper extends the postbuckling analysis in the exact strip software VICONOPT to more accurately reflect the skewed mode shapes arising from shear load and anisotropy. Such mode shapes are represented by a series of sinusoidal responses with different half-wavelengths which are coupled together using Lagrangian multipliers to enforce the boundary conditions. In postbuckling analysis the in-plane deflections involve responses with additional half-wavelengths which are absent from the out-of-plane deflection series. Numerical results are presented and compared with finite element analysis for validation. The present analysis gives close results compared to the finite element and finite strip methods and saves computational time significantly.