Colloquium: Nathan Theoffy Anthony Dsouza(ASM)

With the progressively more widespread exploitation of fastener free connections in post-buckled skin-stiffened structures, accessing and designing against skin-stiffener separation is imperative by having predictive models for the initiation and propagation of delaminations at the connection interface. Given this motivation, the present thesis investigates the development of a novel multi-domain semi-analytical cohesive zone approach to predict the initiation and propagation of damage along a two-dimensional interface. This involves the decomposing the structure into multiple smaller domains for computational advantage, each with its own set of continuous approximation functions based on the Ritz method. The interface connection is modelled as a cohesive zone with its response governed by the traction-separation law (TSL). This is based on a penalty formulation with a damage-dependent penalty stiffness term, whose degradation is controlled by the TSL. Studies show that the developed framework predicts results within 4.3% of FE results, while taking 75% less time.

Supervisor: Dr. Saullo Castro