Buckling of axially compressed CFRP truncated cones: Experimental and numerical investigation

摘要

Thin-walled conical structures are widely used in aerospace, offshore, civil and other engineering fields. Parts of space launcher transport systems are one example for the application of conical shells. Buckling of such thin-walled imperfection sensitive structures is a very important phenomenon to be considered during their design phase. Nowadays, the analysts still use empirically based lower-bound methods such as the NASA SP-8007 for cylinders and SP-8019 for cones to calculate the required knock-down factors (KDFs), which do not include important mechanical properties of laminated composite materials, such as the stacking sequence. New design approaches that allow taking full advantage of composite materials are therefore required.