Test and Analysis of a Buckling-Critical Large-Scale Sandwich Composite Cylinder

Schultz, Marc R ; Sleight, David W ; Gardner, Nathaniel W ; Rudd, Michelle T ; Hilburger, Mark W ; Palm, Tod E ; Oldfield, Nathan J

关键词: BUCKLING;    COMPOSITE STRUCTURES;    FINITE ELEMENT METHOD;    HONEYCOMB CORES;    LAUNCH VEHICLES;    LOAD TESTS;    SANDWICH STRUCTURES;    SHELLS (STRUCTURAL FORMS);    STRUCTURAL STABILITY;    STRUCTURAL DESIGN CRITERIA;    BENDING MOMENTS;    CYLINDRICAL SHELLS;    FAILURE ANALYSIS;    NONDESTRUCTIVE TESTS;    NONLINEARITY;    STRUCTURAL FAILURE;    TEST FACILITIES;   

RP-ID  :  NF1676L-27252

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来源: NASA Technical Reports Server

【 摘 要 】

Structural stability is an important design consideration for launch-vehicle shell structures and it is well known that the buckling response of such shell structures can be very sensitive to small geometric imperfections. As part of an effort to develop new buckling design guidelines for sandwich composite cylindrical shells, an 8-ft-diameter honeycomb-core sandwich composite cylinder was tested under pure axial compression to failure. The results from this test are compared with finite-element-analysis predictions and overall agreement was very good. In particular, the predicted buckling load was within 1% of the test and the character of the response matched well. However, it was found that the agreement could be improved by including composite material nonlinearity in the analysis, and that the predicted buckling initiation site was sensitive to the addition of small bending loads to the primary axial load in analyses.