Stiffening material impact on the work of thin-walled element

Abstract

The subject of research is a numerical analysis of a thin-walled plate with a cut-out and stiffening, made of laminate and subjected to axial compression. The plate was made of a carbon-epoxy composite - a laminate consisting of eight symmetrically oriented plies. The scope of the research included a linear and nonlinear numerical analysis using Finite Element Method (FEM). The main objective of the study was to investigate behaviour of the considered plate made of various stiffening materials, under quasi-static compression to achieve Tsai-Wu criterion. The numerical analysis was conducted with the Abaqus, commercial FEM software package.