Buckling and failure assessment of curved butt-joint stiffened thermoplastic composite panels with roller boundary conditions

Abstract

Two curved thermoplastic composite multi-stringer panels with roller boundary conditions are analysed and tested to investigate the buckling and failure behaviour. The panels are made of AS4D/PEKK-FC thermoplastic composite, have five stringers with an angled cap on the side and are joined to the skin with the short-fibre reinforced butt-joint technique. The panels have a roller attached to each loading edge, approximating simply-supported boundary conditions to apply compression and bending. One panel has an initial damage representing a barely visible impact damage in one of the stringer butt-joints, and one panel is in pristine condition. Finite element analyses are performed to predict the structural behaviour, and different approximations of the roller boundary conditions are compared. The analyses include material damage initiation and evolution. The out-of-plane displacement of the panels is measured by digital image correlation, and failure is captured with high-speed cameras. The panels fail in a sudden manner when the cap separates from the web, followed by web failure and skin–stringer separation in the butt-joint. The numerical analysis predicts the overall structural behaviour but cannot capture well the sudden panel collapse due to material damage.