Aircraft repair is gaining importance for extending the fatigue life of aging aircrafts and also for improving its structural integrity. Among various repair techniques, bonded composite repair is mostly preferred. In this paper, a three-dimensional finite element analysis is carried out to study and compare the performance of single-and double-sided patch on center-cracked aluminum panel. The effects of different parameters such as patch layup, patch thickness and patch material on the stress intensity factor is highlighted. It is shown that the mechanics of double-sided repair is completely different from the single-sided repair. Also, it is found that double-sided repair is more efficient than single-sided repair. In case of single-sided repair, alternative patch material like unbalanced lamina or transversely graded material is proposed. It is observed that there is significant reduction of stress intensity factor with transversely graded patch in case of single-sided repair.
Repair of a cracked aircraft structure by an adhesively bonded composite patch has gained lot of importance in extending the fatigue life as well as improving the structural integrity of it. In the present work, an experimental study is carried out using digital image correlation (DIC) technique to analyze the behavior of single and double-sided adhesively bonded patch repair of an inclined center cracked aluminium panel subjected to uniaxial tensile loading. Further, the shear strain distribution in the adhesive layer is also estimated using the DIC technique. Shear strain concentration at the overlap edge in the adhesive layer is very high leading to patch debonding. Further, optimum patch dimension and patch thickness for the given cracked panel are arrived using a genetic algorithm-based optimization technique in conjunction with finite element analysis (FEA). With the optimum patch configuration, a 3-D FEA is further carried out and the obtained results are compared with the experimental prediction from DIC. The DIC prediction correlates with FEA contours on overall basis.
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