Buckling and postbuckling of stringer stiffened fibre composite curved panels – Tests and computations

The European Commission was funding within its 5th Framework Programme the project POSICOSS, which coped with the demand to design fibre composite fuselage structures for postbuckling under ultimate load. The main objective of the work was the development of improved, fast and reliable procedures for postbuckling analysis and design of fibre composite stiffened panels of future fuselage structures. Another substantial objective was the creation of comprehensive experimental data bases for the purpose of validation.This paper deals with the buckling and postbuckling experiments on axially compressed, stiffened CFRP (carbon fiber reinforced plastics) curved panels, performed by DLR within the POSICOSS project for validation purposes, and it compares experimental results with computations.