Virtual assembly and residual stress analysis for the composite fuselage assembly process

Abstract A new shape control system has been developed to reduce the dimensional deviations between two composite fuselages. To evaluate the system, the virtual assembly and residual stress analysis are needed. Since actuators’ forces are applied to each fuselage during the assembly, residual stresses may remain after the release of actuators. The residual stresses could lead to severe mechanical problems for the fuselage. Therefore, we propose a new finite element simulation and virtual assembly analysis method for evaluating the assembly process of two composite fuselages. Our method simulates the release of actuators directly instead of applying reverse forces, which mimics the assembly process and increases the simulation accuracy. The dimensional change and residual stresses during and after the assembly process are evaluated. The results show that the assembly process with new shape control system is feasible since the residual stresses resulting from the control system are much smaller than the failure threshold.