Investigations on Buckling Behaviour of Laminated Curved Composite Stiffened Panels

In Industrial applications structural efficiency is primary concern, this brings about the need of strong and lightweight materials. Due to their high specific strength, fibre reinforced polymers find wide application in these areas. Panels made of composite materials are widely used in aerospace structures, automobile, civil, marine and biomedical industries because of their good mechanical properties, impact resistance, excellent damage tolerance and also low fabrication cost. In this Paper, buckling and post-buckling analysis was performed on composite stiffened panel to obtain the critical load and modes of failures, with different parameters like ply-orientation, different composite materials, and stiffeners and by changing the number of stiffeners was derived. To analyze the post buckling behaviour of composite stiffened panels the nonlinear finite element analysis is employed and substantial investigations are undertaken using finite element (FE) model. Effect of critical parameters on buckling behaviour is studied and parametric studies were conducted with analytical tool to understand the structural behaviour in the post buckling range.