Nonlinear progressive failure of composite cylindrical panels using different criteria at each failure stage

The published literature on analytical studies of progressive failure of composite plates and shells shows that the researchers used the criterion corresponding to failure initiation in all subsequent steps of failure progress. It is felt that restricting the failure criterion to a single theory may not capture the failure progress behaviour accurately and the stiffness degradation model must give due importance to all possible modes of failure. The novelty of the present paper lies in adopting and establishing the necessity of utilizing all of the criteria like maximum stress, maximum strain, Tsai-Hill, Tsai-Wu, Hashin, Hoffman and Puck in each step of failure progress analysis instead of using the failure theory corresponding to failure initiation only in such study. The approach is applied on industrially important composite cylindrical shell panels utilizing an eight-noded isoparametric element combined with Sanders linear and von-Kármán nonlinear strains. The results are compared with those obtained by the above-mentioned conventional approach and are further post-processed to extract meaningful results of engineering significance. Non-uniform sinusoidal load acting on clamped shell surfaces of cross and angle ply stacking orders is considered combining antisymmetric and symmetric laminations.