Influence of delamination growth and contact phenomena on the compressive behaviour of composite panels

A numerical analysis, providing a realistic insight on the compressive behaviour of composite panels with through-the-width delaminations, was performed by means of an in-house Finite Element Method (FEM) based code able to analyse the influence of delaminations' growth and contact phenomena on the load carrying capability of these kinds of structures. First of all a sensitivity analysis was carried out to underline the influence of delaminations' position along the thickness and their growth on panels' compressive behaviour. Then comparisons with experimental data available in bibliography were performed to test the effectiveness of new numerical techniques. Finally a panel with two delaminations was investigated to point out the need of a numerical tool able to take into account contacts between sublaminates in order to evaluate the real structure's response under compressive load.