Modeling of damage behavior of carbon fiber reinforced plastic composites interference bolting with sleeve

Interference-fit is getting increasing attentions in the aerospace field owing to its excellent enhancement on the sealing and fatigue life of composites assembly, but the severe damage around the hole caused by installation is still a huge challenge. In this paper, a three-dimensional anisotropic non-linear progressive damage model based on continuum damage mechanics was developed to reveal the damage mechanism of carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP) composites interference bolting with sleeve. The proposed model adopted strain-based failure criteria and non-linear damage evolution law to predict damage initiation and propagation of composite laminates. A cohesive model taking into account the traction-separation constitutive response was employed to capture the delamination behavior between the composite plies. The elastoplastic model was utilized to characterize the sleeve's deformation behavior. Numerical simulations of different installation modes are performed and compared with experiments. The inserting load, damage modes and damage positions predicted by the proposed model agree well with the experimental results. Moreover, it is also verified that the interference installation of sleeved fasteners can remarkably reduce the intra-laminar damage and avoid the inter-laminar delamination of composite laminates compared to the conventional bolt.