Laminate Blending Demonstrator

Laminate Blending Demonstrator: A buckling experimental campaign of a physical laminate blending demonstrator

Mohamed Gomaa Abdulfattah Tolba, Mohamed (TU Delft Aerospace Engineering)

van Campen, J.M.J.F. (mentor)

Delft University of Technology

Aerospace Engineering

2019-08-23

The use of fiber-reinforced composites in the aerospace industry has increased over the past couple of decades thanks to their high specific properties. Fiber-reinforced composites also enable engineers to tailor the stacking sequence to satisfy the required stiffness or strength requirements. However, locally optimizing the stacking sequence of composite laminates introduces incompatibilities between the locally optimized sections which jeopardize the structural integrity of the panel. This highlights the importance of “laminate blending” which is a term given to problems that involve the local optimization of laminates while taking into account continuity guidelines to ensure manufacturability. In this work, a constant thickness blended demonstrator of 32 layers and 5x5 sections was designed, manufactured and tested for its stiffness and critical buckling load. The results were compared to a constant stiffness conventional laminate of the same geometry and weight. The critical buckling load of the blending demonstrator was 80.9% higher than that of its conventional counterpart and the stiffness was 93.75% higher.

Variable stiffness
Composites
Buckling
laminate blending

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:2d03dfef-dea6-465f-be8c-8833eba99675

Student theses

master thesis

© 2019 Mohamed Mohamed Gomaa Abdulfattah Tolba