Repair Methods for CFRP Aircraft Structures with Functional Inserts

Aerospace manufacturers increasingly rely on composite materials for the most advanced aircraft, due to their superior performance and tailorability. As the adoption of such structures grows, so does the occurrence of various kind of damages throughout their service life. Therefore, there is the necessity to develop robust, reliable and...

Methods for the exclusion of the fibre bridging effect in composite structures under cyclic Mode I loading

In composite structures, delamination damage is typically the most common failure mechanism. Accurately characterizing the delamination behaviour of composite laminates is therefore crucial for predicting the fatigue safe-life of such structures. To this end, double-cantilever beam (DCB) composite specimens are used to measure the interlaminar...

Manned Martian Aircraft

Quasi-static and Fatigue Strength of Helically Wrapped Structures

A Helically wrapped structure is a hollow pipe structure that is made from a metal strip and the overlapping interfaces are adhesively joined. It is yet unknown how to determine the quasi-static strength and predict the fatigue life of this structure. A method was developed to determine whether either the adherend or the adhesive is critical to...

ArctEvac: A sustainable aircraft able to perform a medical evacuation between two remote research stations on the Antarctic continent

Repairing impacted thermoplastic composites using ultrasonic welding to restore the compressive strength

This research project investigates the potential use of ultrasonic welding as a tool to repair impact damage inside thermoplastic composites to restore the compressive strength. Compared to the already existing method, hot-pressing, ultrasonic welding could offer faster processing times, no need for dedicated tooling, smaller and lighter...

Effect of temperature on fatigue crack growth in adhesive bonds

In this research effect of temperature on the disbond growth rate due to fatigue load in adhesive bonds is investigated. Concept of release of strain energy has been used. In particular the effect of temperature on the relationship between disbond growth rate and strain energy released per load cycle has been investigated. The general trend...