Modelling and Simulation of Adhesives using Cohesive Zone Modelling for Composites

Kurzfassung

In recent years in the aerospace industry a substitution from metal based aluminium to composite reinforced fibre plastics (CFRP) material based design takes place. These materials are characterized by a high stiffness and a low density. Moreover, because of their adaptable anisotropic material properties one has more options to create a problem specific solution. This leads to a lower weight of structures and therefore to a lower consumption of fuel and an increase of safety. Composite components are often jointed similar to metal parts. Doing so lightweight potentials are not exploited. Today's standard rivet or screw joint should be replaced in the future by adhesive bonds. This requires that the properties of bonded joints are examined and understood in order to predict the behaviour in the design process. As part of the master thesis different adhesive bond models have to be investigated. The modelling includes the numerical site with different finite element types as well as the material description. Both the quality of the solutions and the computational effort has to be compared along with these cohesive zone modelling is also analysed and computed. The material properties and also the structural designs are also optimized. The results should be verified with experimental data. In the master thesis the following steps have to be done. 1. Literature study 2. Analysis of different modelling techniques and their coupling (shell, solid, element order, etc.) 3. Comparison of this technique regarding the quality of the results and the computational effort 4. Cohesive zone modelling and analysis of failure criteria in the adhesives. 5. Verification of the numerical results with experimental data 6. Sensitivity analysis on different parameters and material properties.