An efficient trans-scale and multi-stage approach for the deformation analysis of large-sized thin-walled composite structure in aircraft assembly

Large-sized thin-walled composite structure has been widely used in aircraft due to favorable strength-to-weight ratio and stiffness-to-weight ratio. The deformation has great influence on assembly quality of aircraft. So, deformation prediction is essential for guaranteeing the assembly quality. The structure with complicated geometry is difficult to discretize into regular quadrilateral or hexahedron. However, the above types of element are required when using the available conventional laminate shell and continuum laminate shell elements in the commercial software. To cope with this issue, an efficient trans-scale and multi-stage approach is proposed to predict deformation of large-sized thin-walled composite structure in this paper. Firstly, the large-sized composite is divided into several sub-regions based on its lay-ups. Multi-scale homogenizations were adopted to compute the macroscale material properties of each sub-region. Then, deformation analysis on the homogenized model is conducted. During simulation, micro-stress distribution in each element is investigated by stress projection. Damage analysis was conducted with failure criteria. An assembly experiment was conducted to validate the proposed model. The numerical results are in agreement with the experiment. Deformation behaviors of composite panel under different working pressures of 0.03 MPa and 0.09 MPa are evaluated.