Bearing behaviour of high-performance Thin-Ply fibre metal laminates

• Applicant: Benedikt Kötter
• Subject Area: Polymeric and Biogenic Materials and Derived Composites
• Term: from 2022 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 490927892

Based on the experimental results of fibre metal laminate Thin-Ply bearing tests, the research project aims are to achieve further knowledge about the failure behaviour and possible weaknesses by finite element analysis (FEA). Previous studies have shown a significant increase in open hole tensile and bearing strength by local hybridisation with stainless steel foils. Thin stainless steel foils locally substitute the weaker 90° CFRP layers. However, the results and the failure behaviour also showed that there is still great potential for performance improvements. The knowledge acquired by FEA allows to optimise the structure of the hybrid composite and, therefore, to increase the performance of FML-Thin-Ply bolt connections. Higher bearing strength and a more damage-resistant failure behaviour expand the application field of Thin-Ply laminates.Within this study, four parameters will be investigated regarding the optimisation. The parameters are the steel content, the length of the steel layers or its overlap length, the arrangement of the foils and the combination of different layer thicknesses.

• DFG Programme: WBP Fellowship
• International Connection: Japan
• Host: Professor Dr. Hiroyuki Hirakata