POSICOSS—improved postbuckling simulation for design of fibre composite stiffened fuselage structures

The European Commission was funding within its fifth 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. They were essential, because so far postbuckling calculations were extremely time consuming and as such not applicable for design. Another substantial objective was the creation of comprehensive experimental data bases for the purpose of validation.The paper presents an introduction to the POSICOSS project; it derives the main objective of the project from the main general objectives for the design of the next generation of aircraft structures, and it summarizes the work done. The results achieved are only touched, because details of them can be found by consulting the references given.