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 poses new challenges, because the performance of these highly loaded structural joints relies heavily on the performance of the thermoplastic polymer matrix. Furthermore, there is currently not much understanding of the mechanisms involved in thermoplastic welded joint failure, and the numerical and experimental methodologies, originally developed and validated on thermoset composites, have not yet been fully assessed for thermoplastic composites. On top of that, the process conditions to manufacture these new structures may have a significant influence on the mechanical performance of the material and can thus play an important role in the design of thermoplastic composite structures.
The objective of this research is to analyse matrix dominated failure of thermoplastic composites and conduction welded joints and to develop both experimental and numerical methodologies to support the design of thermoplastic composites structures. The research addresses important linkages between the three main pillars of Manufacturing, Experimental and Numerical analysis....