Post-critical deformation states of composite thin-walled aircraft load-bearing structures

Abstract

The study presents results of experimental examination of a model representing a fragment of an aircraft wing structure with the skin made of a glass fibre/epoxy composite. For such a system, the deformation pattern has been found and the representative equilibrium path determined. The finite element method has been used to develop the corresponding numerical model, the correctness of which has been then verified by comparing the obtained results with the course of the relevant experiment. Conformity of the results allowed one to determine usefulness of the applied methods in the assessment of mechanical properties of modified solutions involving integral skin stiffening elements.

Buckling Deformation of Thin Layer Coverings of Small Curvatures Used in Aircraft Construction.

“…The results presented in this paper are a continuation of research carried out by the authors in the field of experimental research and numerical analysis of composite load-bearing structures with special attention to work on buckling deformation, whose details can be found in [10,11]. In this paper, the authors focused on the analysis of solutions based on integral isogrid stiffeners, made of GFRP composite with mechanical properties similar to the properties of the composite used to make the cover.…”

A study of stability and post-critical behaviour of thin-walled composite profiles under compression

“…This especially pertains to thin-walled profiles with complex shapes of the cross section which are used as stiffening elements. The disadvantage of such structures is that they can lose stability even under operational load [8,15,16]. When the buckling of a thin-walled element is local and elastic, the structure does not get damaged, and the element itself can be safely operated in the post-critical state [5,15,16,23].…”

“…Unfortunately, the methods for determining the critical load of real structures are not unequivocal, which adds up to the difficulty with respect to a rational design of such structures. This being the case, an alternative tool enabling determination of critical load is performing a numerical analysis by the finite element method [13,15,16]. Critical load is determined using a nonlinear eigenproblem analysis based on the minimum potential energy of the system.…”

Experimental and Numerical Analysis of the Compression of a Thin-Walled Composite Plate

“…These are the decisive features for the use of thin-walled composite elements as support elements in the automotive [2], the aerospace [16,18,22] or the space industry where there are quite rigorous performance requirements regarding the structure work in the complex load conditions. The specificity of thinwalled supporting structures causes that in case of a specific state of the load its elements can be exposed to the possibility of loss of stability within the exploitation load conditions.…”