Modeling the Effect of Damage in Composite Structures: Simplified Approaches

Modeling the Effect of Damage in Composite Structures:Simplified Approaches
Christos Kassapoglou – Delft University of Technology, TheNetherlands

With the ever increasing application of composites, the need tounderstand how composite structures in aerospace, automotive,marine and construction applications behave over prolonged periodsof service becomes more pronounced. In particular, understandinghow damage affects the performance of such structures and how onecan design them realizing that damage and defects are inevitable,becomes a priority.

Modeling the Effect of Damage in Composite Structures:Simplified Approaches goes past traditional knockdown or safetyfactors used in design, and suggests models that can be used tomore accurately quantify the effect of damage on compositestructures. At the same time it minimizes the use of detailedcomputationally intensive numerical methods that cannot easily beused in preliminary design. It presents simplified approaches thatprovide insight on the effect of various types of damage from holesand cracks to delaminations and impact. These approaches allowrelatively rapid analysis and generation of alternative designs foroptimization and trade–off studies. This helps down–selection ofrobust and efficient design candidates for more detailed and moreexpensive analysis. Finally, the methods are combined into aframework for developing promising analytical fatigue models forcomposite structures.

Key features:

Presents efficient, accurate, analytical models for predictingthe effect of damage on strength of composite structures Provides design guidelines, and step by step descriptions ofhow to apply the methods, along with evaluation of their accuracyand applicability Includes problems and exercises Accompanied by a website hosting lecture slides andsolutions
By presenting reliable approaches that assist design and analysiswithout the need for expensive numerical methods, Modeling theEffect of Damage in Composite Structures: Simplified Approachesis an invaluable reference for graduate students and practisingengineers in the field.

 

Christos Kassapoglou received his BS degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics and two MS degrees (Aeronautics and Astronautics and Mechanical Engineering) from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his PhD degree from Delft University of Technology. Since 1984 he has worked in industry, first at Beech Aircraft on the all–composite Starship I and then at the Structures Research Group at Sikorsky Aircraft specializing on analysis of composite structures for the all–composite Comanche and other helicopters and leading internally funded research and NASA and the US Army funded program. Since 2001 he has been consulting with various companies in the US and Europe on applications of composites, damage tolerance and certification. He joined the Aerospace Engineering Department of the Delft University of Technology (Aerospace Structures) in 2008 as an Associate Professor. His interests include fatigue and damage tolerance of composites, design and optimization for cost and weight, and technology optimization. He has over 60 journal papers and 3 patents on related subjects. He is a member of AIAA, AHS, and SAMPE.