Simulation of the stress distribution on fuselage structures for the pre- and post analyses of curved panel tests

Abstract

The testing equipment for fuselage panels of aircrafts at the IMA GmbH Dresden is designed for fatigue tests as a preliminary stage to the full aircraft fatigue test. The natural disturbance at the boundaries of these panels is going to be minimized due to a well-adapted test rig design. The main advantage of this testing scenario lies in the lower testing effort and is therefore used to assess new design or material concepts. A numerical simulation of this process by means of a finite element (FE) analysis is the most important tool to model the actual setup and to adjust the loads in terms of a varying panel configuration. The objective in this project is to extend the current testing strategy to panel configurations with an open set of geometrical parameters. The consideration of cut-outs or new materials as well as a new variety of fuselage diameters and non-circular crosssections gets into focus. The results coming from these analyses can be used to draw conclusions for the loading situation of future detailed structure tests having refinement and sub-modelling strategies of an FE model in mind. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009.