Strength evaluation of bolt joint with hole clearance

Abstract

The use of advanced composite materials in main structures of military and civil aircraft has been increased rapidly because of their considerable metals in high specific strength and stiffness. Therefore, the design of composite joint has become a very important research area because they are often the weakest areas in composite structures. Mechanical bolt joint require machining of bolt holes that interrupt the fiber continuity and may affect the strength of the composite by hole clearance. In the paper, the failure strengths of composite bolt joints with the clearance of 0.08mm, 0.48mm and 0.88mm were tested and evaluated. The failure index and damage area method were used for the failure prediction of the bolt joint with hole clearance. From the tests, the failure strengths of the bolt joints with 0.88mm clearance were 23.8% smaller than that of the bolt joint with 0.08mm clearance and they were in inverse proportion to the hole clearance. Also, the experimental failure modes were compared with the analytic failure modes by the failure index and damage area. Copyright © (2012) by Asian-Australasian Association for Composite Materials (AACM).