The Effect of Stitching on Compression Behavior of Stiffened Composite Panels

Failure of stiffened panels under compression is preceded by buckling of their skin and hence is affected by the presence of out-of-plane stresses. One of the promising methods of preventing premature delamination is stitching. The present paper discusses the effect of such stitching on compression behavior of blade-stiffened panels that were fabricated from plain weave AS4/3501-6 through resin film infusion process. Kevlar 29 yarn was used at a stitch density of 9.92 stitches per cm2. Some of the panels were damaged by drop-weight impact before compression testing. For comparison purposes unstitched panels with the same materials and dimensions were also tested under the same loading conditions. Stitching resulted in a 10% improvement in strength in the absence of any intentional damage. The beneficial effect of stitching was most obvious when the panels were impacted on a flange: a 50% improvement was observed in post-impact strength. However, stitching could not prevent stiffener from failure when impacted directly. Thus stitching had no beneficial effect when impact occurred on a stiffener. A buckling and post-buckling analysis was carried out using 3-D shell elements on the Abaqus. Predictions were in fairly good agreement with the experimental data.