This paper investigates the effects of precondition characteristics on the residual compressive strength (RCS) of 16-ply carbon/epoxy panels through the establishment of their compressive and buckling response characteristics. The preconditions of varying sizes include impact damage and embedded artificial delaminations of both circular and elliptical shapes. A sequence of prebuckling, local and global buckling, and postbuckling is found in both the longitudinal and transverse directions. The possibility of delamination propagation is examined using the response characteristics on the basis of the sequences. A damage threshold is found at the 25% panel width or 455mm 2damage area. Both the global buckling loads and the RCSs suffer substantial degradation but in a different manner, depending on the threshold. For small damages, the global buckling loads are unaffected but the RCSs suffer substantial degradation, though there is little evidence for the delamination propagation. For large damages, while the global buckling loads are reduced moderately with an increase of the damages due likely to the unstable global buckling-to-postbuckling transition, the RCSs do not suffer further reduction, though evidence is found for the delamination propagation. These panels fail soon after the unstable global bucklingtopostbuckling transition. Panels with multiple delaminations suffer a greater reduction in RCS than the impact-damaged panels. A combination of the delamination size and number is shown to have the most dominant effect on the RCSs. It is demonstrated that the present method of embedding artificial delaminations proves to be very useful for studying the RCS of impact-damaged panels via the establishment of response characteristics and their links to the effects of the preconditions on them.
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