ABSTRACT
The manufacturing defects, contact and damage problems are inevitable, which need to be considered in the nonlinear FEM analysis. Anyfantis et al. (2012) studied the progressive post-buckling and the final failure response of stiffened composite panels based on the structural nonlinear FEM. Orifici et al. (2008) combined the post-buckling deformations and several composite damage mechanisms to successfully predict the damage growth and collapse behaviour of composite stiffened structures under compression. The buckling behavior influenced by the type of stiffeners, panel orthotropic ratio, tensile stiffness and shear stiffness ratios of stiffener and skin (Jain, 2010).
