Full-scale performance assessment of aircraft secondary sandwich structure using thermoelastic stress analysis

Abstract

The use of resin film infusion (RFI) has been proven to reduce the cost of production of aircraft secondary sandwich structure. In this paper thermoelastic stress analysis (TSA) is used to assess the performance of full scale aircraft sandwich structure panels produced using both the conventional autoclave process and RFI. Finite element (FE) models of both panel types are developed and TSA is used to validate the models