Impact of composite manufacturing constraints on aerospace stiffened panel design

This paper reports on a design study assessing the impact of laminate manufacturing constraints on the structural performance and weight of composite stiffened panels. The study demonstrates that maximizing ply continuity results in weight penalties, while various geometric constraints related to manufacture and repair can be accommodated without significant weight penalties, potentially generating robust flexible designs.

Impact of composite ply continuity constraints on aerospace stiffened panel design

Considering the development of aerospace composite components, designing for reduced manufacturing layup cost and structural complexity is increasingly important. While the advantage of composite materials is the ability to tailor designs to various structural loads for minimum mass, the challenge is obtaining a design that is manufacturable and minimizes local ply incompatibility. The focus of the presented research is understanding how the relationships between mass, manufacturability and design complexity, under realistic loads and design requirements, can be affected by enforcing ply continuity in the design process. Presented are a series of sizing case studies on an upper wing cover, designed using conventional analyses and the tabular laminate design process. Introducing skin ply continuity constraints can generate skin designs with minimal ply discontinuities, fewer ply drops and larger ply areas than designs not constrained for continuity. However, the reduced design freedom associated with the addition of these constraints results in a weight penalty over the total wing cover. Perhaps more interestingly, when considering manual hand layup the reduced design complexity is not translated into a reduced recurring manufacturing cost. In contrast, heavier wing cover designs appear to take more time to layup regardless of the laminate design complexity. © 2012 AIAA.

Utilisation of Glass Reinforced Plastics as Cost Effective Alternative to Traditional Materials in Access Panel Design for Waste Water Treatment Plants

Composites are fast becoming a cost effective option when considering the design of engineering structures in a broad range of applications. If the strength to weight benefits of these material systems can be exploited and challenges in developing lower cost manufacturing methods overcome, then the advanced composite systems will play a bigger role in the diverse range of sectors outside the aerospace industry where they have been used for decades.
This paper presents physical testing results that showcase the advantages of GRP (Glass Reinforced Plastics), such as the ability to endure loading with minimal deformation. The testing involved is a cross comparison of GRP grating vs. GRP encapsulated foam core. Resulting data gained within this paper will then be coupled with design optimization (utilising model simulation) to bring forward layup alterations to meet the specified load classifications involved.

Virtual Reality as a tool to Assist Learning in Aerospace Assembly

This study examines whether virtual reality (VR) is more superior to paper-based instructions in increasing the speed at which individuals learn a new assembly task. Specifically, the work seeks to quantify any learning benefits when individuals have been given the opportunity and compares the performance of two groups using virtual and hardcopy media types to pre-learn the task. A build experiment based on multiple builds of an aircraft panel showed that a group of people who pre-learned the assembly task using a VR environment completed their builds faster (average build time 29.5% lower). The VR group also made fewer references to instructional materials (average number of references 38% lower) and made fewer errors than a group using more traditional, hard copy instructions. These outcomes were more pronounced during build one with differences in build time and number of references showing limited statistical differences.