THERMOELASTIC STRESS ANALYSIS FOR STRUCTURAL PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT OF AEROSPACE COMPOSITES

The development of thermoelastic stress analysis systems employing compact low-cost thermal detectors provides an important capability for aircraft structural integrity assurance. In aircraft fullscale durability testing it affords a significantly improved basis for validating finite element modelling of complex airframe components, and can be used to rapidly identify and then monitor fatigue hot spots. To date such systems have mostly been applied to metallic aircraft components and on issues relating primarily to fatigue, however with the growing use of composite materials in aircraft there is interest in how these systems can be applied to composite aircraft components. This paper draws on several case studies from coupon level to full-scale airframe fatigue testing to demonstrate that thermal detector based TSA systems can play an important role in evaluating the structural performance of composite aircraft components.