Journal Article
Aspects of Damage Tolerance and Fatigue of CFRP Structural Components
2015-09-15
2015-01-2596
Lightweight structures are one key issue for all future mobility concepts. Carbon fibre reinforced plastics (CFRP) play an important role in these disciplines due to their outstanding mechanical performance regarding to their weight. Therefore, CRFP structures have been widely used since decades in aerospace industry resulting in improvements in payload, fuel consumption and range. The Airbus A350, Boeing B787 in civil airplane industry as well as military products like the NH90 transport helicopter are examples of this development towards “all composite”-aircrafts. A main difference of CFRP-structures towards metallic ones is the behaviour regarding damage tolerance and fatigue. For helicopter composite structures this issue is newly defined in §573 of the relevant certification specifications (CS and FAR).
