Damage tolerance of pre-stressed composite panels under gas gun impact

Kurzfassung

The paper describes a damage tolerance study carried out for EASA on the ‘Significance of Load upon Impact Behaviour of Composite Structure’ in the LIBCOS project. Currently impact tests on aircraft structures are carried out on test specimens supported in a test fixture in a stress-free condition. However aircraft fuselage and wing structures in flight are subjected to quasi-static loads up to design limit load, hence foreign object impacts usually occur on preloaded structures which may influence damage tolerance. LIBCOS studies experimentally the effect of preloads on impact damage in carbon/epoxy structures, and on subsequent residual strengths of damaged structures.