Experimental and Finite Element Characterization of the Crippling Failure of Composite Stiffeners

Progressive failure analysis based on the complete unloading method was conducted to investigate the crippling failure of carbon/epoxy composite stiffeners under axial compression. A modified arc-length algorithm was incorporated into a nonlinear finite element method to trace the equilibrium path after local buckling. For the validation of the finite element method, several carbon/epoxy Z-section stiffeners were tested in compression. The finite element results on the buckling and crippling stresses showed good agreement with the experimental results.