Description
Traditional aircraft composite stiffened panels are designed to avoid buckling of the skin at service loads, to prevent initiation and growth of delamination damages. In stitched composites, the stitching provides reinforcement against delamination; therefore, the structure can be designed for operation in a post buckled state with local skin buckling. The novel stitched stiffened composite panel concept titled Pultruded-Rod Stiffened Efficient Unitized Structure, PRSEUS, was designed specifically for operating in the postbuckling regime, yet the nonlinear postbuckling behavior of PRSEUS has not been explored fully. This thesis presents a finite element analysis based trade study to understand influence of frame stiffener design variables on the nonlinear postbuckling response of the PRSEUS panel concept. The trade study allowed exploration of the design space as a first step towards design optimization. It also allowed discovery of some of the challenges of post processing that must be addressed to enable an automated surrogate based design optimization of the PRESUS stiffened panel concept for operation in postbuckling regimes.
