Experimental and finite element characterization of the crippling failure of composite stiffeners

Abstract

Progressive failure analysis based on the complete unloading method was conducted to investigate the crippling failure of carbon/epoxy composite stiffeners under axial compression. A modified arc-length algorithm was incorporated into a nonlinear finite element method to trace the equilibrium path after local buckling. For the validation of the finite element method, several carbon/epoxy Z-section stiffeners were tested in compression. The finite element results on the buckling and crippling stresses showed good agreement with the experimental results.