WAVE MODELLING OF A LIGHTWEIGHT AEROSPACE PANEL USING A FINITE ELEMENT APPROACH

• Autor(a) principal: Sousa, Kleverson C. de
• Data de Publicação: 2017
• Outros Autores: Fabro, Adriano T.
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Revista Interdisciplinar de Pesquisa em Engenharia
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.unb.br/index.php/ripe/article/view/15029

Aerospace structures require high strength and low mass, which has led to an increase in the use of composite materials by its industry. These materials result from the combination of two or more base materials in a way that one or more of the composite’s properties are superior to either of the individual ones. A type of material that presents those desired attributes is the honeycomb sandwich panels and, as the industry is relying more and more on them, their accurate characterization for the given application is of extreme importance. In this paper, the wave and finite element (WFE) approach is applied and thewave parameters of a homogenized honeycomb sandwich panel model for aerospace applications are presented and numerical details discussed. The wave approach differs from the more usual modal analysis (MA) by focusing in properties such as the dispersion relations, wave modes, phase and group velocities, and energy transmission. Although MA with the aid of finite element modelling (FEM) is a widely used technique, as the frequencies of interest increase, the computational cost also increases. Moreover, the size of the elements also limits the maximum frequency that can be accurately characterized. On the other hand, the WFE method requires the model of a single period of a periodic structure, which can be obtained from any commercial FE software, benefiting from the available element libraries,reducing the computational cost when applied to a wider frequency range. The numerically obtained parameters are compared to an analytical model and show agreement with the theory. Keywords: Wave and finite element, Wave propagation, Sandwich panel