The modal testing has proven to be an effective and non-destructive test method for estimation of the dynamic stiffness and damping constant. The aim of the present paper is to investigate the modal response of stiffened Fiber Metal Laminated (FML) circular cylindrical shells using experimental and numerical techniques. For this purpose, three types of FML-stiffened shells are fabricated by a s...

Optimal design of laminated composite stiffened panels of symmetric and balanced layup with different number of T-shape stiffeners is investigated and presented. The stiffened panels are simply supported and subjected to uniform biaxial compressive load. In the optimization for the maximum buckling load without weight penalty, the panel skin and the stiffened laminate stacking sequence, thickne...

An issue of concern in aging aircraft is the growth of multiple cracks emanating from a row of fastener holes, typically in a pressurized aircraft fuselage lap splice. This multisite damage (MSB), or widespread fatigue damage, if allowed to progress, can suddenly become catastrophic. The understanding of the failure behavior dictates the level of compromise between safety and economy. The compl...

Although most of the basic animal body plans are supported by hydrostatic skeletons consisting of fluid maintained at constant volume, studies on how animals have solved biomechanical scaling dilemmas during evolution of large body size have emphasized cases where skeletons are formed by rigid solids. Larvae of gastropod molluscs swim using ciliated velar lobes supported by a constant volume hy...

The compound strip method (CSM) for plates is an expansion of the finite strip method (FSM) and was developed to incorporate the effects of the support elements in the analysis of linear elastic plate systems. In this paper the CSM is further expanded to analyze structures such as stiffened plates under loads in the plane of the plate or the so called plane-stress condition. Examples of these t...