Improved Material Exploitation of Composite Airframe Structures by Accurate Simulation of Collapse – The COCOMAT project

Abstract

European aircraft industry demands for reduced development and operating costs, by 20% and 50% in the short and long term, respectively. Contributions to this aim are provided by the completed project POSICOSS and the running follow-up project COCOMAT, both supported by the European Commission. As an important contribution to cost reduction a decrease in structural weight can be reached by exploiting considerable reserves in primary fibre composite fuselage structures through an accurate and reliable simulation of postbuckling and collapse. The POSICOSS team developed fast procedures for postbuckling analysis of fibre composite stiffened panels, created comprehensive experimental data bases and derived design guidelines. COCOMAT builds up on the POSICOSS results and considers in addition the simulation of collapse by taking degradation into account. The main objective is a future design scenario for composite stiffened panels which allows the exploiting of considerable reserves in primary fibre composite fuselage structures. The results comprise an extended experimental data base, degradation models, improved certification and design tools as well as design guidelines. The paper deals with the main objectives of the project COCOMAT, the general status of the progress as well as DLR’s first results.