About Project:

"The numerical and experimental research of compressed composite plate elements with central cut-out"

As part of the PRELUDIUM project, an original concept of a thin-walled plate element with a central cut-out was developed, which can work as an elastic or load-bearing element.

The commonly known methods of increasing the resistance to the phenomenon of loss of stability of thin-walled elements through the use of stiffeners, lead to a change in the structural form and an increase in its own weight, which is not desired by designers. Thanks to the conducted research, it was possible to find a way to significantly improve the resistance of the plate elements to the loss of stability by means of construction measures consisting in forcing the loss of structural stability according to a higher buckling form thanks to an innovative approach to testing asymmetrical layer layout (own / proprietary asymmetric layer layout with the desired couplings were developed) in which there are the couplings effects  and chosing  this couplings effects, which enable the change of the buckling form of the structure. Thanks to this, we have an influence on the behavior of the structure in a critical and post-critical state, and thus on the stiffness characteristics of the structure. This property is very important in the operational aspect, because it is easy to obtain elements with identical dimensions for installation, and extremely different stiffness characteristics. The scope of the research concerns the determination of the influence of the geometrical parameters of the cut-out and the configuration of composite layers on the stability and post-critical states of the structure. The research area includes the issues of nonlinear stability of thin-walled structural elements and the issues of mechanics of fibrous composites - laminates. The research is carried out in the field of experimental research on physical models of structures, as well as in the field of numerical simulations using the finite element method. The numerical results obtained so far for the created model remain in qualitative and quantitative agreement with the results of experimental research, which confirms the correctness of the developed concept.

This concept is currently being developed to increase its applicability to other composite structures.