The local buckling, postbuckling, and crippling (failure) of channel, zee, and I- and J-section stiffeners made of AS4/3502 graphite-epoxy unidirectional tape are studied by experiment and analysis. Thirty-six specimens were loaded in axial compression as intermediate length columns. Examination of the experimental results indicates the existence of a number of damage initiation modes, all of which involve either delamination in some part of the specimen or local material strength failure in a comer of the specimen. The ratio of the flange width to thickness has a strong influence on the buckling stress and damage initiation mode. The inner corner radius strongly affects the buckling and crippling stresses for the I- and J-section specimens. Comparison of the numerical results from a computer code for shell analysis (STAGS) with experimental data shows good correlation prior to buckling and at the buckling load, but diminished agreement in the postbuckling region. This lack of postbuckling correlation is attributed to the neglecting of transverse shearing deformations in the structural theory, inaccuracies in the modeling of in-plane boundary conditions, and damage initiation in the experimental specimens. A plane stress failure analysis for five of the specimens shows the compressive fiber mode criterion of Hashin correlates reasonably well with the first detectable damage event. Equilibrium is used to develop interlaminar stress equations for classical laminated plate theory that require high order derivatives of the displacements. Derivatives computed from discrete displacement data using the Discrete Fourier Transform are inaccurate due to the Gibbs phenomenon. / Master of Science