Progressive Damage Modeling of Full-Scale Sandwich Composite Aircraft Fuselage Panels

摘要

The ability to accurately predict the failure process and residual strength of a damaged advanced composite structure is a technical challenge. In this study, the framework to simulate damage formation and progression and predict residual strength was developed and compared with test results of full-scale honeycomb sandwich composite aircraft fuselage panels containing various initial artificial damage configurations. The panels were subjected to quasi-static internal pressurization combined with hoop and axial loading using the Full-Scale Aircraft Structural Test Evaluation and Research (FASTER) facility located at the Federal Aviation Administration William J. Hughes Technical Center.This paper focuses on the development and application of computational progressive damage models to full-scale primary aircraft structures. A global-local finite element analysis was performed for each of the panels. The global models accurately represented the introduction of the loads to the panels by the FASTER loading fixtures and the details of the panel geometry and lay-up. The local models were driven by the displacement and transverse shear strain results of the global models and loaded by internal pressure. A relationship between effective damage length and the displacements of the global-local interface was developed to ensure proper driving of the local models with damage progression. The prepreg face sheets and honeycomb core were treated as homogeneous orthotropic materials.