Post-Buckling Analysis of Damaged Multilayered Composite Stiffened Plates by Rayleigh-Ritz Method

A Rayleigh-Ritz approach for the analysis of buckling and post-buckling behavior of cracked composite stiffened plates is presented. The structure is modeled as the assembly of plate elements modeled by the first order shear deformation theory and taking geometric nonlinearities into account through the von Karman’s theory assumptions. Continuity along the plate elements connected edges and the enforcement of rigid and elastic restraints of the plate boundaries are obtained by using penalty techniques, which also allow to straightforwardly implement efficient crack modeling strategies. General symmetric and unsymmetric stacking sequences are considered and numerical procedures have been developed and used to validate the present solution by comparison with FEA results. Original results are presented for post-buckling solution of multilayered stiffened plates with through-the-thickness cracks, showing the effects of large displacements on the cracked plate post-buckling behavior.