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AE 2305 AIRCRAFT STRUCTURES LAB-II

R- 2008
TAGORE ENGINEERING COLLEGE
RAJALAKSHMI ENGINEERING COLLEGE
Chennai-600 127

THANDALAM

DEPARTMENT OF AERONAUTICAL ENGINEERING

AIRCRAFT STRUCTURES LAB


MANUAL AE-6511 AIRCRAFT STRUCTURES LAB -II
LAB MANUAL
LAB MANUAL

HOD/AERO LAB IN-CHARGE


(Mr.Yogesh Kumar Sinha) (Mr.S.Aravindan)
LIST OF EXPERIMENTS

1. Unsymmetrical Bending of a Cantilever Beam


2. Combined bending and Torsion of a Hollow Circular Tube
3. Material Fringe Constant of Photo elastic Models
4. Shear Centre of a Channel Section
5. Free Vibration of a Cantilever Beam
6. Forced Vibration of a cantilever Beam
7. Fabrication of a Composite Laminate.
8. Determination of Elastic constants for a Composite Tensile Specimen.
9. Determination of Elastic constants for a Composite Flexural Specimen.
10. Tension field beam
11. Moire techniques
Fabrication of Composite Laminates

Aim :
To make composite model using hand layup technique.

Apparatus

Required:
Fiber glass

Epoxy Resin

Wax

Mylar Film

Roller

Acetone

Hardener

Theory

Spray Lay-Up

Description:

Fibre is chopped in a hand-held gun and fed into a spray of catalyzed resin directed at the mould.
The deposited materials are left to cure under standard atmospheric conditions.

Material Options:

Resins: Primarily polyester


Fibres: Glass roving only
Cores: None. These have to be incorporated separately

Typical Applications:

Simple enclosures, lightly loaded structural panels, e.g. caravan bodies, truck fairings, bathtubs,
shower trays, some small dinghies.
Main Advantages:

Widely used for many years.


Low cost way of quickly depositing fibre and resin.
Low cost tooling.

Main Disadvantages:

Laminates tend to be very resin-rich and therefore excessively heavy.


Only short fibres are incorporated which severely limits the mechanical properties
of the laminate.
Resins need to be low in viscosity to be sprayable. This generally compromises
their mechanical/thermal properties.
The high styrene contents of spray lay-up resins generally mean that they have the
potential to be more harmful and their lower viscosity means that they have an
increased tendency to penetrate clothing.
Limiting airborne styrene concentrations to legislated levels is becoming
increasingly difficult.

Wet/Hand Lay-up

Description:

Resins are impregnated by hand into fibres which are in the form of woven, knitted, stitched or
bonded fabrics. This is usually accomplished by rollers or brushes, with an increasing use of nip-
roller type impregnators for forcing resin into the fabrics by means of rotating rollers and a bath
of resin. Laminates are left to cure under standard atmospheric conditions.
Materials Options:

Resins: Any, e.g. epoxy, polyester, vinylester, phenolic


Fibres: Any, although heavy aramid fabrics can be hard to wet-out by hand.
Cores: Any.

Typical Applications:

Standard wind-turbine blades, production boats, architectural mouldings.

Main Advantages:

Widely used for many years.


Simple principles to teach.
Low cost tooling, if room-temperature cure resins are used.
Wide choice of suppliers and material types.
Higher fibre contents and longer fibres than with spray lay-up.

Main Disadvantages:

Resin mixing, laminate resin contents, and laminate quality are very dependent on the
skills of laminators. Low resin content laminates cannot usually be achieved without the
incorporation of excessive quantities of voids.
Health and safety considerations of resins. The lower molecular weights of hand lay-up
resins generally mean that they have the potential to be more harmful than higher
molecular weight products. The lower viscosity of the resins also means that they have an
increased tendency to penetrate clothing.
Limiting airborne styrene concentrations to legislated levels from polyesters and
vinylesters is becoming increasingly hard without expensive extraction systems. Resins
need to be low in viscosity to be workable by hand. This generally compromises their
mechanical/thermal properties due to the need for high diluent/styrene levels.

Procedure:

Collect the all materials like fiber glass , resin

Cut the fiber glass for our required size.

Prepare resin ( mix with hardener)

And find the jel time of resin

And put the layer and resin when we get our required thickness

Results

Hence prepare the composite laminate by hand layup method.


Determination of Elastic constants for a Composite Tensile Specimen

Ex. No.:

Date :

Aim:

To determine the Young’s Modulus for a Glass/Epoxy composite Tensile specimen.

Apparatus Required:

UTM

Specimen

Vernier Caliper

Scale

Formula:

Young's modulus along the fiber direction E1:

Young's modulus transverse to the fiber direction E2:

Volume fraction of the matrix Vm :

Theory

In-plane tensile testing of plain composite laminates is the most common test. Tensile
tests are also performed on resin impregnated bundles of fibers (“tows”), through thickness
specimens (cut from thick sections of laminates), and sections of sandwich core materials.

Examples of common standards for the tensile testing of laminates are ASTM D 3039,
EN 2561, EN 2597, ISO 527-4, and ISO 527-5. The specimens are parallel sided with bonded
tabs to prevent the grip jaws from damaging the material and causing premature failures.
Gripping mechanisms include manual and hydraulic wedge grips. For demanding aerospace
testing, hydraulic wedge gripping solutions are generally preferred because of their
controllability and repeatability. However, well-designed mechanical wedge grips can also
provide good levels of alignment. Hydraulic grip solutions for non-ambient testing often place
the hydraulic components outside the temperature chamber for safety and reliability.

Accurate alignment of the grips and specimen is very important when testing composite
materials due to the fact that the anisotropic properties, such as the modulus and strength, of the
material differ depending on the direction of the applied stress and are often brittle in nature.
Adjustable alignment fixtures are available to ensure that testing systems meet the alignment
criteria required for reliable composites testing and as required by specific audit programs used
by aerospace industries, such as Nadcap AC7122/1. To be effective, alignment fixtures need to
allow adjustment of both concentricity and angularity while the machine load-string is under
load. The accepted method of checking for alignment under load is to use a strain gaged
“alignment cell or specimen.” The alignment cell should have dimensions that are as close to the
specimens being tested as possible. Typically the alignment cell will be fitted with two or three
groups of four strain gages. Additionally, software is available that will provide a display of both
the bending and the concentricity and angularity errors. This software identifies the adjustments
that are required and displays, in real time, the effect of the adjustments, enabling accurate
machine set-up in minutes.

When using well-aligned grips, it is recommended that the grips are permanently left in
place on the testing machine and that, when needed, test fixtures including compression platens
and bend fixtures are mounted on the grips using adapters.

Strain measurement for composites tensile testing is usually performed using either an
extensometer or a bonded strain gage. The use of an extensometer is generally preferred as strain
gages involve additional labor and cost. However, in both case, it is recommended to use an
average strain value based on measurements on both sides of the specimen in order to correct for
errors caused by specimen bending.

Model Graphs:
Stress-Strain Curve of FRP Composites
Tabulation:

S.No Materilas Load (P) Displacement Stress Strain E1 E2

5
Procedure:

Set the specimen in the UTM fixture.

Apply the load to the specimen

And Data Acquisition system generate the load and displacement data

Also DS generate the stress strain curve

And from stress strain curve ,to find the modules of elasticity of composite along that directions

Results:

Thus the young’s modulus of composite materials was found

E1 =_____________

E2 =_____________
Determination of Elastic constants for a Composite Flexural Specimen

Ex. No.:

Date :

Aim:

To determine the Flexural strength and Young’s Modulus for a Glass/Epoxy composite
specimen.

Apparatus Required:

UTM

Specimen

Vernier Caliper

Scale

Formula:

Maximum flexural strength:

Young’s Modulus:

Where
M – Moment (or torque) applied at the middle of the specimen,
Y - Distance from the center of the specimen to the convex surface, and
I - Moment of inertia
F – Applied load

Theory :

Bend or flexure testing is common in springs and brittle materials whose failure
behaviours are linear such as concretes, stones, woods, plastics, glasses and ceramics. Other
types of brittle materials such as powder metallurgy processed metals and materials are normally
tested under a transverse flexure. Bend test is therefore suitable for evaluating strength of brittle
materials where interpretation of tensile test result of the same material is difficult due to
breaking of specimens around specimen gripping. The evaluation of the tensile result is therefore
not valid since the failed areas are not included in the specimen gauge length. Smooth
rectangular specimens without notches are generally used for bend testing under three-point or
four-point bend arrangements as shown in figures 1 a) and b) respectively. Figure 2 illustrates
three-point bending which is capable of 180o bend angle for welded materials.

Figure 1: Bend testing of a rectangular bar under a) three-point bend and b) four-point bend
arrangements.

Considering a three point bend test of an elastic material, when the load P is applied at the
midspan of specimen in an x-y plane, stress distribution across the specimen width (w = 2c) is
demonstrated in figure 3 a). The stress is essentially zero at the neutral axis N-N. Stresses in the
y axis in the positive direction represent tensile stresses whereas stresses in the negative direction
represent compressive stresses. Within the elastic range, brittle materials show a linear
relationship of load and deflection where yielding occurs on a thin layer of the specimen surface
at the midspan.This in turn leads to crack initiation which finally proceeds to specimen failure.
Ductile materials however provide load-deflection curves which deviate from a linear
relationship before failure takes place as opposed to those of brittle materials previously
mentioned. Furthermore, it is also difficult to determine the beginning of yielding in this case.
The stress distribution of a ductile material after yielding is given in figure 3 b). Therefore, it can
be seen that bend testing is not suitable for ductile materials due to difficulties in determining the
yield point of the materials under bending and the obtained stress-strain curve in the elastic
region may not be linear. The results obtained might not be validated. As a result, the bend test is
therefore more appropriate for testing of brittle materials whose stress-strain curves show its
linear elastic behaviour just before the materials fail.
Figure 3: Stress distributions in a rectangular bar when a) elastically bended and b)
after yielding [1].

For brittle materials having a liner stress-strain relation, the fracture stress ( σ f) can be
determined from the fracture stress in bending according to a linear elastic beam analysis as
shown in equation 1

Under there-point bending in figure 1 a) when the load P is applied at the midspan of a
rectangular bar of a length L between the two rollers, the highest bending moment at the midspan
is
The fracture stress in bending is called the bend strength or flexure strength, which is
equivalent to the modulus of rupture in bending. The bend strength is slightly different from the
fracture stress obtained from the tensile test if failure takes place further away from yielding.
However, brittle materials possess higher strength in compression than in tension. The material
failure under bending is therefore owing to the tensile stresses especially along the surface
opposite to the load direction.

The determination of the yield strength (σy) is carried out by replacing the load at
yielding Pf in equation 4. The yielding load is determined at the definite yield point or at certain
% offset.Hence, we now have the yield strength in equation 5. It should be noted that the yield
strength obtained from the bend test is not different from the yield strength achieved from the
tensile test. This is because the relationship between the load and the deflection remains linear at
yielding.
Diagrams:

Experimental procedure

Measure the width and thickness of the specimen including the span length in the table
provided for the calculation of the stress and elastic modulus. Mark on the locations
where the load will be applied under three-point bending.

Bend testing is carried out using a universal testing machine until failure takes place.

Construct the load-extension or load-deflection curve if the dial gauge is used.
Calculate the bend strength, yield strength and elastic modulus of the specimen

Describe the failure under bending and sketch the fracture surfaces in the table provided.

Discuss the obtained experimental results and give conclusions.
Tabulation:

Discussion about the test:


Conclusion

Viva Question:

Explain how did cast iron fail under bending? Would it be different from a failure of aluminium
under bending?

What do you expect if the bending experiment has been carried out at elevated temperatures?

Give three examples of engineering applications which involve bending properties of the
materials.
STUDY OF MOIRE TECHNIQUES

Aim :

To study the moire fring techniques of birefrigentant materials.

Theory :
Conclusion:

Hence the studied about Moire Fringe Techniques.

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