Toward Integrated Aircraft Design with Carbon Fiber Reinforced Thermoplastic (CFRTP)

This article summarizes our most recent progress in developing a simulation-based tool for aircraft design using carbon-fiber reinforced plastics (CFRP) (Date et al. in Aerosp Sci Technol 124(107565), 2022) and virtual testing of open-hole tension/compression (OHT/OHC) strength of carbon-fiber thermoplastics (CFRTP) (Shirasu et al. in J Compos Mater 56:2211–2225, 2022). The effects of fiber properties on the static aeroelastic design of CFRP wings were investigated in the first topic, which used a multi-scale framework and two-way coupled aeroelastic analysis with structural sizing. T700S, T800S, and T1100G fibers with varying stiffnesses and strengths were studied. The stress-strain responses and damage initiation/propagation mechanisms of the CFRTP with an open-hole were investigated experimentally and numerically in the second topic. The stress-strain response of OHT and OHC obtained experimentally was well reproduced by considering the material nonlinearity of thermoplastic resin using extended finite element model (XFEM) tools for the evaluation of stress strain response as well as damage and failure mechanisms in OHT and OHC tests.