04.2 - Aerostructures Design, Structural Dynamics, Aeroelasticity

A STRUCTURE DESIGN OF CFRP REAR PRESSURE BULKHEAD WITHOUT STIFFENERS

Z.Y. Li¹, Y.Z. Han¹, X.H. Yao¹; ¹AVIC the First Aircraft Institute, China

The bulkhead of aircraft is a structural component which is installed in the fuselage as the interface of the pressurized zone and unpressurized zone that supports the pressure load in the cabin. rnThe rear pressure bulkhead of cylindrical cabin is more likely a kind of dome in preference to a flat pressure bulkhead. A hemispherical shell provides an ideal rear dome because of the membrane stresses for a given amount of material at the least. Actually the dome is a cap of hemisphere rather than a whole hemisphere. During this research, the author assumes that the rear pressure bulkhead with the diameter D=3000mm. The mass of spherical crown comes to the minimum when the meridian angle is 60o. rnThe Hexcel 8852 IM7 which is a high performance CFRP that is widely used in aerospace structures as a result of its relative better impact resistance and damage tolerance for a wide range of applications. For the composite material, impact damage is the biggest threat of the structure instead of fatigue. The delamination of the structure is the critical damage of the composite material. The fatigue failure of composite materials is considered to occur gradually because of the microscopic cracks exist during all the life time. For the tension-tension type loadings, the fatigue behaviour of composite material is superior to metal. For this reason, in this paper, the CFRP rear pressure bulkhead owns no stiffeners but a web crack stopper which is place inner the dome skin laminate. The skin of CFRP pressure bulkhead doesn’t need to be cut into several pieces because of the whole skin can be manufactured in one piece. The crack stopper is carved into web shape and uses the same CFRP material with the dome skin. The crack stopper not only can play a role in stop the crack from propagating but also has a function of stiffeners of dome skin.rnIn this paper, the research on a structure desi

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