EFFECTS OF THERMAL LOADS ON THE MECHANICAL BEHAVIOUR OF BONDED AIRCRAFT SUBCOMPONENTS.

The aim of this work is to investigate the effects of thermal loads on the elastic instability of jointed composite components. Fibre-reinforced composite materials, which are of great interest for aerospace structures, are characterised by anisotropic thermal expansion coefficients. This characteristic influences the elastic stability behaviour when thermal stresses applied on the component. Actually, the presence of thermal coefficients varying with direction, can generate interlaminar shear stresses related to specific stacking sequences and in general shear stresses between bonded composite subcomponents and/or hybrid metal/composite subcomponents. A numerical study, performed within the ABAQUS FE code environment, is presented here with the aim to provide a preliminary investigation on the effects of the thermal load on the elastic behaviour of the jointed composite structures representative of a civil aircraft fuselage component. The influence in terms of buckling load and mode variation has been investigated by comparing the numerical results with experimental data from ad ad-hoc thermo-structural test campaign.