Analysis of thermoplastic composites and conduction welded joints

Thermoplastic composites enable new manufacturing techniques such as conduction welding to make the aviation industry more sustainable, while at the same time, provide great benefits to cost-efficient high-volume production. One of the benefits of welding is that it reduces the amount of mechanical fasteners required. Fastener-free joining also...

Generation of design allowables on the open hole tensile strength of composite laminates using sensitivity analysis and uncertainty quantification framework

Aeronautical industries are concerned about the cost effective generation of design allowables for composite laminates. Design allowables take into account the variabilities arising from different sources (material, manufacturing, defects etc.,) which are determined using expensive and time consuming experimental campaigns....

Experimental and numerical evaluation of conduction welded thermoplastic composite joints

The capability of joining two thermoplastic composite parts by welding is a key technology to reduce the weight and cost of assembled parts and enables high volume manufacturing of future aeronautical structures made of thermoplastic composite materials. However, there is not much experimental understanding of the mechanisms involving welded...

Development of a Numerical Framework for Virtual Testing to Support Design of a Next Generation Thermoplastic Multifunctional Fuselage

This work summarizes the recent developments of a numerical framework to predict the mechanical behaviour of thermoplastic composites. It supports the design of a next generation thermoplastic multi-functional fuselage which uses advanced joining techniques such as thermoplastic welding to reduce both weight and cost by limiting the amount of...

Virtual testing of thermoplastic composites: Towards a hybrid simulation-physical testing pyramid

This paper summarizes the implementation of a Virtual Testing methodology in an industrial environment to predict the mechanical behaviour of composite material through the different scales of the conventional physical testing pyramid. A robust Virtual Test Lab allows for the generation of virtual allowables, while advanced interface models...

Development of a Virtual Testing Methodology for Structural Fatigue Testing Setups

Full-scale structural testing of of aircraft structures has been and still is the task of the aircraft industry when new aircrafts are developed. The NLR performs structural testing of aircraft structures for certification, this is done using structural test setups. Structural testing consists out of static testing (ultimate load) and fatigue...