Modeling the Effect of Damage in Composite Structures: Simplified Approaches

Preface

One of the main features of a good structural design is the ability to account for damage representative of what may occur during the lifetime of the structure and ensure that performance is not compromised with such damage present. For the case of airframe structures, knowledge of the effects of damage on structural performance is crucial in designing safe but weight-efficient structures.

This book provides a brief discussion of various types of damage and how they can be modelled during preliminary design and analysis of composite structures. It is addressed to graduate-level students and entry-level design and structural engineers. It is the result of a graduate course at Delft University of Technology covering design and analysis of composite structures in the presence of damage. While the emphasis is on aerospace structures, the principles and methods are applicable to all other fields with appropriate adjustment of safety factors and design criteria (e.g. impact damage).

Because the emphasis is on preliminary design and analysis, more accurate, and absolutely necessary during detailed design, computational methods such as finite elements are only briefly touched upon during the discussion. As a result, the accuracy and applicability of some of the approaches presented are not as good as those resulting from detailed finite element analysis. However, the methods are very efficient and provide good starting designs for more detailed subsequent evaluation. They can ...