A Study on Response of a Contoured Composite Panel with Co-cured Stiffeners Under Transient Loading

Composite materials are emerging to be the best applied materials for aerospace applications. With rapid improvement in computational facilities, it is now possible to design the best composite lay up for a particular kind of application. This paper presents the development of a Finite Element model of a contoured composite panel with co-cured stiffeners using Finite Element Simulation. Commercial package ANSYS 15.0 is used for this study. Such half contoured panels find wide application in Aerospace industry. The panel is hinged at one of the ends and dynamically loaded at the other end over a relatively small surface area by transverse load. The response of the panel is observed for variation in stresses, deflections and failure criteria. The panel is expected to rotate about the hinge point by 4° from the initial point. The transient response of the composite panel has been observed for expected load and two test load cases and results reported in this paper. Analysis has become useful input for the design of panel. © 2016, The Institution of Engineers (India).