Numerical Modelling of a Composite Fuselage Manufactured by Liquid Resin Infusion

Abstract

FUSCOMP (FUSelage COMPosite) is a Research & Development program which has received the label from the Aerospace Valley competitiveness cluster. It will lead to a test of a composite fuselage demonstrator manufactured by the Liquid Resin Infusion (LRI) process. LRI is based on the moulding of high performance composite parts by infusing liquid resin on dry fibers instead of prepreg fabrics. The study of this proof of concept is based on the TBM 850 airframe, a pressurized business turboprop aircraft currently produced by DAHER-SOCATA. Technical achievements will concern numerical methods and finite elements analysis to be used for the modelling of this aircraft composite fuselage structure. Actual industrial projects face composite integrated structure issues as a number of structures (stiffeners,...) are more and more integrated onto the skins of aircraft fuselage. Indeed the main benefit of LRI is to reduce assembly steps which lead to cycle time gain and thus cost reduction. In particular, infusing components and sub-components at the same time avoids riveting parts altogether. However it is necessary to validate the dimensioning of the studied composite structure.