Potential of cross section varying Ω stringer made of carbon fibre reinforced plastics

Modern lightweight structures commonly use stiffeners of constant cross section to increase the stability of thin shells. This paper introduces a particular ΩΩ stringer with variable cross section, allowing an increase of local skin buckling load, through an effective partitioning of the skin fields. The present work contains a methodology to develop a feasible design for stiffened shells. Parametric studies including criteria like stability, strength and damage tolerance, are performed. Additionally, a static compression experiment is conducted. Considering actual sizing criteria it can be shown that the introduced type of stringer leads to improved load carrying capacity through weight quotients