Papers by Keyword: Aerospace Structure

Abstract: Significant advantages in weight reduction and increased strength have place advanced aluminum-lithium alloys at forefront of aerospace materials research. These alloys are being developed to fulfill the ever increasing need for high strength, high properties, light weight and cost effective for aerospace industry. Conventional aluminum alloys has long been in service for aerospace application. The addition of lithium to aluminum improves modulus and decrease density compared to conventional aluminum alloys. Atomic weight of lithium is 7 mass units compared to aluminum 23 mass units, hence there is density reduction of about 3% for each weight percent addition of lithium and about 6% increase in Youngs modulus. In principle weight saving for aerospace structural parts could reach up to 15 %. This paper examines effect of lithium addition on properties, physical metallurgy; various phases developed during processing of these alloys. The addition of Lithium to aluminum form coherent, low density Al₃Li (δ^׳) precipitates. However the binary alloys have poor mechanical properties which are attributed to strain localization and shearing of soft Al₃Li (δ^׳) precipitates. This problem has been solved by development of ternary and quaternary alloys containing copper and magnesium. In all aluminum-lithium alloys, small addition of zirconium or scandium is done to improve recrystallization. The new developed aluminum lithium alloys series Al-Li-Cu-X are potential candidate to replace existing conventional alloys in terms of enhanced properties with reduced density.

Abstract: The paper presents a fluid structure interaction based numerical study of impact loading for a hemispherical structure upon water and a space capsule water landing. The study has a strong relevance in the determination of the crashworthiness of aerospace structures upon water impact loading. Finite element based numerical techniques have been used for the analysis of the underlying transient dynamic and fluid-structure interaction. Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) and Arbitrary Lagrange-Eulerian (ALE) methods have been used to simulate the behaviour of the fluid (water) under impact conditions. The accelerations and velocities of the impacting objects have been validated with by experimental measurements and analytical results. Numerical analyses showed a strong potential for the use of developed computational fluid structure interaction models for analyses of water impact loading related problems.

Abstract: The electro-mechanical (E/M) impedance-based method is one important and effective method in damage detection. The basic concept of the impedance method is to monitor the variations in the structural mechanical impedance spectrum caused by damage in the structure. Comparing the impedance spectrum to a baseline measurement of the undamaged structure, the real part of the E/M impedance reflects the state of structural health in the local area, therefore, the structural damage can be localized, a local-area self-sensing method is implemented. In this paper, an aluminium plate mounted on an electromagnetic shaker is used to detect growing fatigue damage using the impedance method. The growing damage is documented by an increase of the indicators. For the case of a static artificial damage the concept is also demonstrated to an Airbus A320 fuselage part using 9 self-sensing elements on the stringers.