Kinematic approach for a global-local coupling: Compressive behaviour of a delaminated panel

Abstract

A kinematic approach to global/local coupling has been applied to investigate the behaviour of a delaminated stiffened composite panel, by using an in-house finite element based procedure. The delamination growth phenomenon has been simulated by employing fracture elements implemented in the B2000++® code, which are based on the Modified Virtual Crack Closure Technique (MVCCT); this technique is able to compute the energy release rate on the delamination front for each fracture mode. A very fine three-dimensional mesh in the delaminated region has been considered in order to obtain a good prediction of the delamination growth. The rest of the structure has been modelled by means of shell elements. A global/local approach based on point-wise multipoint constraint has been implemented in the in-house-code and used to connect shell meshes to solid ones. A numerical application on a delaminated composite stiffened panel taken from literature has been introduced. Models characterized by different levels of complexity, i.e. without delamination, with delamination, with delamination growth have been considered and compared to understand the effectiveness of the introduced kinematic approach.