Deformation and stress of a composite–metal assembly

Abstract

Compliant structures, e.g. automobile body panel and airplane wing box are widely used. A compliant structure consists of one or more flexible parts, and these parts share the mating features among them. Because of process-induced deformation and part-to-part variations, external forces are applied during the assembly process and the parts are deformed. As a result, the final assembly is pre-stressed and its geometrical shape may deviate from the designed shape. Therefore, the assembly variation and residual stress need to be analysed in order to evaluate the structure performance. In this study, a new approach based on response surface methodology is developed. A number of organised virtual experiments are conducted with the aid of finite element analysis and regression models are fitted to the resulting data. These regression models relate part variations to assembly variation and residual stress. Monte Carlo simulation can be conveniently done using these simple regression models. The effectiveness of this method was illustrated using a composite–metal assembly. It is shown that the method presented in this paper provides a practical and reliable solution to the analysis of compliant structures.