Experimental and Numerical Analysis of Defects in Composite Panels Used in Business Aircrafts Interior

摘要

This paper provides an optical characterization and numerical prediction of local deformations appearing on the visible side of composite sandwich panels used for interior furniture of business airplanes. During manufacturing of furniture panels, metallic inserts are bonded inside the sandwich panel using an epoxy adhesive. Surface defects appear on the visible side of the panels due to curing of the adhesive, but also because of temperature gradients and humidity during manufacturing and in service. This paper presents an optical characterization based on deflectometry principle, that allows qualitative and quantitative analyses of the surface deformations in 3-dimensions. In addition, this paper presents a parametric model based on finite elements to predict the formation of surface defects using ABAQUS. A comparison is presented between the experimental observations and numerical predictions with good agreement between them.