MATERIALS SCIENCES LLC — Department of Defense SBIR Phase II: AF182-062

Description

An improved understanding of structural behavior of a composite bolted yield can yield weight and cost savings by enabling the designer to eliminate unnecessary conservatism. Software tools for the design and analysis of large scale structural bolted joint assemblies of composite laminates are required to be robust, accurate and computationally efficient models to be useful in military or commercial design environments. The high anisotropy of Carbon fiber reinforced polymer composites, the high stress concentrations at load transfer point at the bolted joints and the brittle nature of the composites lead to a reduction in bearing capacity. Proposed solutions have involved the addition of metal plies into the laminate to improve bearing performance. The proposed approach builds on current developed software to automate the generation of realistic and complex finite elements model for composite hybrid joint designs. Multi-fidelity modeling will be used to manage the computational expense of solving these complex and challenging problems. The results of these modeling efforts will be validating by a set of tests of single and multibolt joint configurations.