Vibration analysis of interply hybrid composite for an aircraft wing structure

Abstract

Due to the rise in environmental issues the research and development of natural and synthetic fibers have risen exponentially for various industrial applications. Research is going on to develop newer fiber-reinforced plastic composites in order to replace metals and alloys. Due to the flexibility composite materials offer compared to metals there has been many innovations coming up in the aerospace industry. Composite materials due to their most desirable property, the high strength to weight ratio have play a major role in weight reduction, and they used for both structural applications and components of all automobiles and space crafts. With primary focus of aerospace industry being to reduce weight and thereby reducing fuel consumptions. The objective of this project is to design and fabricate a simple airfoil wing skin using hybrid composites and to experimentally study its vibrational behavior. The primary focus of this project is to understand the effect of hybridization on the mechanical properties namely vibrational behavior of composite structures. The composites used are carbon, aramid, basalt and glass fibers. The specimens were fabricated by the simple and most common hand lay-up method. The hybrid configurations fabricated were CGC (carbon/glass/carbon), AGA (aramid/glass/aramid) & BGB (basalt/glass/basalt). Free vibration tests were performed to study their natural frequencies and also to understand their damping characteristics.