The skin/stiffener interface debonding has been a longstanding problem for composite stiffened panels. Proper crack-arresting reinforcements become a necessity for the wide application on large-scale framed structures. Z-pinning was employed to strengthen composite skin/stiffener bond in this study. Herein, static and fatigue tensile tests were conducted on a generic configuration to characterize the improvement of Z-pinning on skin/stiffener debonding resistance to skin stretching. Results show that the improvements on ultimate debonding strength and fatigue life are significant, even though the effect on crack onset is marginal under either monotonic or cyclic loading. Z-pinning changes the unstable continuous crack growth into a propagation-suspension-propagation evolution pattern. The crack growth rate is decreased by up to three orders of magnitude due to Z-pinning. Effects of pin distribution were experimentally studied. A locally densified distribution is found to be more effective than the traditional uniform distribution.
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