Improved knockdown factors for composite cylindrical shells with delamination and geometric imperfections

Abstract

For cylindrical shell structures under axial compression, it is crucial to provide high-fidelity knockdown factors (KDFs) in preliminary design for aerospace and civil structures. In this paper, numerical studies of buckling response for composite cylindrical shell with geometric imperfections and embedded delamination imperfections are performed to predict the lower-bound buckling loads. Results indicate that composite shells with single dimple-shape geometric imperfection exhibit similar lower bound trend and buckling behavior as those with embedded delamination imperfection. It is found that the lower-bound buckling loads are much less conservative than the corresponding design recommendation from NASA SP-8007. And the effect of geometric imperfections can envelope that of delamination imperfections. Therefore, the worst multiple perturbation load approach (WMPLA) is performed to find the worst combination of dimple-shape geometric imperfections to predict the lower-bound buckling load, and the efficient global optimization (EGO) is employed to improve the computational efficiency of WMPLA. It is demonstrated that the improved WMPLA can provide an improved KDF by examples in open literature. Based on the improved KDFs, it is possible to increase the load-bearing efficiency of composite structures in practical engineering.