Analysis and testing of a thermoplastic composite stiffened panel under compression

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Abstract

This paper presents the numerical analysis of a thermoplastic composite stiffened panel subjected to compression load. The panel has three stringers with a non-symmetric design, with an artificial crack at the middle stringer interface and is made from a fast crystallizing polyetherketoneketone carbon composite. The finite element model includes an approximation of the geometrical imperfections which were measured using a digital image correlation system. The finite element analyses are discussed, where the crack propagation is modelled using the virtual crack closure technique. The results show that crack propagation starts rather early after buckling and the crack growth behaviour is heavily influenced by the buckling shape, which consists of three half-waves in longitudinal direction in each bay.