Bonded composite repair of composite structures

Repair and maintenance cost drives a large percentage of the lifetime cost of aircraft structures. Understanding repair issues can lead to a structure that significantly lowers the lifetime cost. Advanced composite materials, while offering the potential to increase aircraft capabilities with minimum weight, are more susceptible to repairable damage than conventional aircraft materials. Improved inspection and repair methods are required to ensure structural integrity and aircraft readiness in the existing operational environment. Many of today's innovative composite designs may result in aircraft structures that are unreasonably difficult to repair.; As a first step, technical issues associated with bonded composite repair of composite structures were investigated. An extensive literature review identified many areas where real world composite repairs are being used successfully. An electronic database was developed summarizing the publications found during the literature review. The database includes publication, experimental test results and analytical results of advanced composite bonded repairs.; The current analysis of repair does not account for the variations that exist in repair. To facilitate the analysis, a finite element interface was developed to provide analysts with a tool that would create complete finite element models of repaired structures efficiently and in a 3-dimensional view. The finite element models created by the developed interface were successfully correlated to test data for accuracy of the results. Parametric studies were performed using the interface to evaluate effects of repair variables.; Thermal impact of repair on the repair panel is one area lacking attention in the repair literature. To understand the impact of heat and thermal gradients of the repair, an analytical investigation was performed to evaluate. the parameters affected by heat. For a solid laminate, the temperature at the adhesive bondline was investigated. The primary focus is on sandwich panels where heat transfer is known to impact the repair process. The internal pressure from the heat of the repair process and moisture trapped in honeycomb structure was evaluated and shown to produce sufficient pressure to disbond the facesheet from the core.