COMPOSITE ANALYSIS AND
STRUCTURAL SIZING SOFTWARE
STRUCTURAL SIZING SOFTWARE
Craig Collier, Phil Yarrington, Pete Gustafson, and Brett Bednarcyk
Aerospace metallic and composite laminate stiffened panels also called “skinstringer panels” are designed to support load beyond local buckling of the skin. This design approach requires a method to quantify post buckled collapse strength of the panel. This paper presents an accurate and computationally efficient analysis method intended for broad industry usage based on a rapid, iterative convergence of both the ‘effective width’ of unbuckled skin and convergence of the updated overall panel stiffness and resulting internal load redistribution. The method is implemented into the HyperSizer® software. Verifications to Abaqus® non-linear FEA and validations to test data are included.