Aerospace industry primes have indicated that improvements to currentmethods for characterizing damage tolerance of full-scale composite structures areneeded. To address this need, a methodology is being developed that utilizesexperimental results correlated with analysis models to enable a reduction in timeand funding resources required to demonstrate that damage tolerance requirementsof a composite structure have been met. The subject of the work outlined in thisdocument was a scale-up effort, extending the scope of traditional coupon levelexperimental and analysis approaches to include larger representative structuralelements. This effort is intended to lay the foundation for designing a modifieddamage tolerance test procedure that more closely replicates loads and failuremodes observed in composite airframe and nacelle structures. Once validated, thiscombined experimental/analysis approach should significantly reduce the numberof tests required for airframe designers to demonstrate damage tolerance ofcomposite structures. This paper outlines part of the validation effort undertaken tocorrelate a finite element (FE) nonlinear buckling analyses (in ABAQUS)incorporating a user defined nonlinear material subroutine (UMAT). This numericalmodeling framework was applied to capture the post-buckling response and finalcollapse of a hat stiffened panel with machined damage subjected to an in-planecompression load.
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