Study of delamination of composite hat skin stringer interface failure

Sammanfattning: The use of composite materials brought a tremendous breakthrough in the scientific world of aerospace engineering. The lack of understanding of the failure of composite materials can be disastrous. Composite laminated structures need to be thoroughly studied and investigated in the design stage. In this thesis, formed-hat skin stringer made of composite laminates is investigated. Delamination is the most common failure of laminated composites, which has two stages delamination onset and delamination propagation. In the preliminary design phase, firstly the structures need to be investigated for low-velocity impact to check the formation of damage onset due to the impact that may arise during manufacturing. In the detailed design phase, the structure is investigated to study the evolution of delamination growth under loading conditions. The structure is modeled using 3 D elements because of the presence of Interlaminar stresses in the width and thickness direction and anisotropic nature. In this thesis, more emphasis is given on the interface between the skin and the stringer. The debonding effect of the interface is studied using cohesive zone model(CZM).