Investigation on repairable damage tolerance for structural design of aircraft composite structure

Abstract

The aircraft composite structure has a disadvantage which is very weak against impact damages. A repair technique using external patch is recognized as an effective method to recover the service life of damaged structures. This work is focusing on the impact damage evaluation and the external patch repair techniques of the aircraft sandwich composite structure. The impact damages of the carbon/epoxy fabric face sheets–honeycomb core sandwich laminate are simulated by the drop-weight type impact test equipment. The damaged specimens are repaired using the external patch repair method after removing the damaged area. The compressive strength test and analysis results of the repaired impact damaged specimens are compared with the results of the undamaged specimens. Finally, the strength recovery capability after repairing is investigated.

Keywords

Aircraft composite structure impact damage repair damage tolerance

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