Future Design for Composite Airframe Structures

Abstract

European space and aircraft industry demands for reduced development and operating costs. Structural weight reduction by exploitation of structural reserves in composite space and aerospace structures contributes to this aim, however, it requires accurate and experimentally validated stability analysis of real structures under realistic loading conditions. This paper presents different advances from the area of computational stability analysis of composite aerospace structures which contribute to that field. For stringer stiffened panels, as used in aerospace main results of the finished EU project COCOMAT and objectives of the running EU project MAAXIMUS are given. Aim is the exploitation of reserves in primary fibre composite fuselage structures through an accurate and reliable simulation of postbuckling and collapse. For unstiffened and highly imperfection sensitive cylindrical composite shells as more used in space applications, a proposal for a new and efficient design method is presented. It takes the advantages of composite materials in an efficient way into account.