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 ofcracked composite stiffened plates is presented. The structure is modeled as the assembly of plateelements modeled by the first order shear deformation theory and taking geometric nonlinearitiesinto account through the von Karman’s theory assumptions. Continuity along the plate elementsconnected edges and the enforcement of rigid and elastic restraints of the plate boundaries areobtained by using penalty techniques, which also allow to straightforwardly implement efficientcrack modeling strategies. General symmetric and unsymmetric stacking sequences are consideredand numerical procedures have been developed and used to validate the present solution bycomparison with FEA results. Original results are presented for post-buckling solution ofmultilayered stiffened plates with through-the-thickness cracks, showing the effects of largedisplacements on the cracked plate post-buckling behavior.