The effect of shimming material on flexural behavior for composite joints with assembly gap

摘要

Shimming material, like liquid shim, is generally employed to compensate the assembly gap between composite components in structure assembly process of aircraft. To investigate the effect of shimming material on flexural behavior for composite joints, specimens with predesigned assembly gaps were manufactured and three-point bending tests were conducted with different initial gap sizes, shimming materials, shimming percentages as well as bolt-hole clearances. The major conclusions from experiments are: (i) the presence of assembly gap decreases the strength of the assembly, while the shimming material can make up for the loss; (ii) mechanical properties of shimming material have a positive effect on flexural behavior; (iii) the higher the shimming percentage the better the flexural behavior; (iv) bolt-hole clearance influences the load take-up stiffness.