aeroway's blog
A new interactive Calculator for the calculation of composite stiffness has been developed. Simply input your micro-mechanical properties of the composite on the web page and the axial, A, coupling, B, and bending, D, matrices are calculated. This website provides a quick reference for Composite designers.
www.compositecalculator.com
Finding the effective rigidities of an advanced composite wing can simplify the analysis considerably. The application of fibre-reinforced composite materials in the aerospace industry extends from commercial to military aircraft, such as the Boeing F18, B2 Stealth Bomber, AV-8B Harrier (Jones, 1998 and http://www.compositecalculator.com). The attractiveness of composites lies in their mechanical properties; such as weight, strength, stiffness, corrosion resistance, fatigue life. Composites are widely used for control surfaces such as ailerons, flaps, stabilizers, rudders, as well as rotary and fixed wings. That is why the analysis of composite structures is imperative for aerospace industry. The main advantage of composites is their flexibility in design. Mechanical properties of the laminate can be altered simply by changing the stacking sequence, fibre lay-up and thickness of each ply which leads to optimization in a design process.
To prevent catastrophic oscillatory failures in aircraft wings, a vibration analysis is imperative. A specific Circumferentially Asymmetric Stiffness Configuration is implemented and fully described in http://www.aeroway.ca/Taperedwing.htm
A new Dynamic Finite Element (DFE) formulation is developed to calculate the natural frequencies and modes of wings composed of advanced super light composite materials. This enhanced method provides highly accurate solutions compared to classical Finite Elements.
A method to detect small cracks in a metal or homogeneous material in a non-destructive way by means of natural frequencies was first proposed by Adams et al (1978). He proposed that the crack size and location on a bar specimen could be found using natural frequencies of free vibration ignoring the natural modes all together. reference www.aeroway.ca
