The present paper deals with the buckling and post-buckling analysis of a multilayered composite reinforced panel. The panel, design for aeronautical applications, results in a complex stacking sequence, and the development of a refined model able to describe its geometrical nonlinear behavior is mandatory to avoid the usage of highly computational effort-required 3D finite elements. The proposed approach is a finite element analysis based on the Carrera Unified Formulation (CUF). Thanks to CUF, a 1D model of the composite panel can be formulated and complicated stress fields within the structure can be evaluated, so the nonlinear behavior is fully described. A refined Equivalent Single Layer (ESL) technique is employed, making use of Lagrange polynomials for the description of the stacking sequence. The results clearly demonstrate the reliability of this approach, comparing the linearized buckling and nonlinear post-buckling solutions with those from Nastran (1D, 2D and 3D) and experiments. @en

This research work deals with the buckling load prediction of reinforced laminated composite panels of aeronautical interest. Being subjected to pure compression, these panels are characterized by stable post-buckling. Thus, the vibration correlation technique (VCT) is utilized herein as an effective nondestructive means to extrapolate critical loads from free vibration measurements. A hierarchical design of experiments, making use of nested multifactors (i.e. panel replicas, test setups, and measurement repetitions), is employed to estimate components of variance. The experimental outcomes are compared with the results of an advanced finite element model with layer-wise kinematics and based on the Carrera Unified Formulation (CUF). The results show that, although obtained with a low number of tests and specimens, the VCT experiments are repeatable and provide a good validation of the numerical simulations, which are demonstrated to be accurate and reliable.

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