Reliability assessment of post-buckling compressive strength of laminated composite plates and stiffened panels under axial compression

A method for reliability assessment of the post-buckling compressive strength of laminated composite plates and stiffened panels under axial compression is presented in the paper. The prediction of the post-buckling compressive strength is performed by a progressive failure analysis which was developed based on a progressive stiffness degradation model and a nonlinear finite element analysis with a new explicit through-thickness integration scheme. A method coupled with the finite element analysis is proposed for reliability assessment where a finite difference method combined with an improved first-order reliability algorithm that omits the non-important random variables but retains sufficient accuracy was developed for reliability estimation. Two numerical examples are described demonstrating the capabilities of the method developed.