A Global/Local Finite Element Approach for Predicting Interlaminar and Intralaminar Damage Evolution in Composite Stiffened Panels Under Compressive Load

This paper addresses the prediction of intralaminar and interlaminar damage onset and evolution in composite structures through the use of a finite element based procedure. This procedure joins methodologies whose credibility has been already assessed in literature such as the Virtual Crack Closure Technique (for delamination) and the ply discount approach (for matrix/fiber failures). In order to establish the reliability of the procedure developed, comparisons with literature experimental results on a stiffened panel with an embedded delamination are illustrated. The methodology proposed, implemented in ANSYS A (c) as post-processing routines, is combined with a finite element model of the panel, built by adopting both shell and solid elements within the frame of an embedded global/local approach to connect differently modelled substructures.