Snalysi of Composite Laminate Bolted Joints

[trammellr]

My name is Bob Trammell and I am a an aerospace structural analyst.
Can anyone give me the name of a good book, paper, etc. that offers a step by step method for the analysis of bolted joints in composite laminates?

 

[MrFEMcredible]

Hi Bob, just seen this.

Don't know if you managed to find a suitable comprehensìve reference (cos there isn't one ;-)) but as a starting point,

Try checking out this thread, usefìul as an opening gambit if you've never done this before:-

http://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=48992

Note in particular the opening line of comment #1 by edrush too, just to give you confidence :O)

Then 'Polymire' 's comment Gives some simple equations although remember it's only a quick run-through.
If you're using honeycomb panels for example there's a whole load of potential additional complexity.

Then the comments from the 'pros' at SWcomposites also put a downer on procedings if you think it's a simple job of plugging numbers into a few equations.

One other advice, the success of you're analysis depends as much on your ALLOWANLES as your stress calculation methods ... and that itself is a whole new can of worms, not to mention time and cost to get it right !
Not only material (laminate) allowables,which are very material & lay-up dependent, but also effects of composites (stiffness) on bolt pre-loads , pre-load loss maybe , etc.... , moisture absorption, etc.. .etc...

Remember the golden rule , you can analyse as many failure modes as you want and it'll fail in the mode you overlooked, so go into detail.

Good Luck.

 

[SWComposites]

You should post this over on the Composite Engineering forum. Most folks here are civil engineers.

There really is no good reference outside of proprietary company documents. And you will need test data (lots of it) to provide the data for a bolted joint analysis.