PRESENTATION BY Dr Ronan O’Higgins

MSSI PRESENTATION TITLE Issues Related to Bolted Joint Design in Composite Aircraft Fuselages

ABSTRACT Recent years have seen a dramatic increase in the use of advanced fibre reinforced composite materials in structural applications, in particular in the commercial aerospace industry. While new manufacturing methods reduce the number of fasteners required in a composite airframe, mechanical fastening is still a widely used joining technology. The EC FP7 funded project, MAAXIMUS, focused on investigating issues associated with design and manufacture of a composite fuselage for a large passenger carrying commercial aircraft. UL work in the project involved the experimental and numerical investigation of thin, composite fuselage skin bolted joints, in particular countersunk joints, under quasi-static and high rate loads. This talk presents some of the findings of this work.

ABOUT THE PRESENTER Ronan O’Higgins is a lecturer in the Department of Mechanical, Aeronautical and Biomedical Engineering (MABE) at the University of Limerick. He is a member of the MSSI since 2012 and is an academic member of IComp: The Irish Centre for Composites Research. He has 10 years experience in the design, manufacture testing and analysis of composite structures. He completed a PhD at the University of Limerick in 2007 focused on a numerical and experimental study of damage initiation and growth in fibre reinforced composite materials. In 2008, he began work as a postdoctoral researcher on the SFI funded project, ‘Multiscale Modelling of Composite Materials’ (MULTICOMP), where he supported development of a multiscale finite element based damage model for composite materials and was responsible for micromechanical characterisation of composite materials. In 2009, he was appointed as researcher/project administrator on the EC FP7 funded project, MAAXIMUS. The work involved testing and modelling of representative fuselage structure, in particular, quasi-static and high rate testing of composite bolted joints and impact testing of composite skin structure. He is currently the IComp representative to the Commercial Aviation Composites Repair Committee (CACRC) and is Co-PI on the EI/IComp funded project PROTHERM which is focused on the manufacturing of thermoplastic composites using automatic tape placement and other novel methods. He has published 6 peer reviewed journal papers and 10 conference papers

REFRESHMENTS WILL BE PROVIDED AT 11h45

For further information, please contact: Joan O’Riordan, Tel. No: (061) 213127 or Email: joan.oriordan@ul.ie