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CASE STUDY Aircraft Wing Sine Wave Spar

The document discusses the design of composite wing spars with a sine wave configuration. A sine wave configuration provides buckling stability which is important for designs with multiple spars that experience low individual loads. An optimal design uses arcs that are separated by a small flat region rather than being fully tangential. The spars have webs made of layers of CFRP cloth and unidirectional plies for shear and stiffness. Additional plies cap the flanges and reinforce the fastener areas. Tooling must be able to split to accommodate the asymmetric spars.

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Balwinder Gherha
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814 views3 pages

CASE STUDY Aircraft Wing Sine Wave Spar

The document discusses the design of composite wing spars with a sine wave configuration. A sine wave configuration provides buckling stability which is important for designs with multiple spars that experience low individual loads. An optimal design uses arcs that are separated by a small flat region rather than being fully tangential. The spars have webs made of layers of CFRP cloth and unidirectional plies for shear and stiffness. Additional plies cap the flanges and reinforce the fastener areas. Tooling must be able to split to accommodate the asymmetric spars.

Uploaded by

Balwinder Gherha
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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CASE STUDY Aircraft wing sine wave spar

Proposed designs for composite wings often consist of a number of spars with laminated skins. A multispar design means that load on the individual spars is low and buckling tends to be the dominant design criterion. A structure of sine wave configuration is ideal for this application. The design of the sine wave configuration itself is influenced by a number of factors: The size and spacing of fasteners through the flanges. The width of the web. The critical buckling load. The ease of processing.

Different geometries are possible but it is found that a wave configuration based on arcs which are not tangential, but separated by a small flat region is the optimum of the alternatives. Of the other options tangential arcs pose tooling difficulties and a true sinewave has insufficient buckling stability. A typical spar cross-section is shown below.

Typical wing spar cross section

The webs of the spars have three layers; two CFRP cloth plies with fibres orientated at [45] to transmit shear loads, and one unidirectional CFRP ply in the centre to provide vertical stiffness. The [45] layers are folded over to form the flange. Additional reinforcements are applied each side of the web, orientated at 90, to transmit the load from the fasteners into the web. The structure is completed by capping plies on the tops of each flange. The stability of the web as a function of the number of laminate layers is shown below.

Stability of web designs for aircraft wing sine-wave spar Matched metal tooling can be developed for the sine wave spars, as, in detail, the spars are not symmetrical about a centre-line and the tools must therefore be capable of splitting into several parts.

Tooling for aircraft wing sine-wave spar

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