Flat and Curved Panel Manufacturing

This paper describes the manufacturing of flat test panels and curved stiffened test panels for the multi-site damage assessment of CFRP structures. Unidirectional carbon fibre prepreg has been used to laminate and autoclave the test panels. The flat panels in sizes 300 × 300 mm and 600 × 600 mm have been produced to provide a low-cost simple test article. The majority of the manufacturing effort has gone into the production of the curved test panels to be used for compression tests after having been subjected to multi-site damage. Tooling has been manufactured to be used in the various processing steps, which involve stringer autoclave consolidation, stringer machining, cobonding the stringers to the still-to-be-consolidated curved skin panel, application of reinforcement plies for load introduction, potting of the stringer ends, machining of the panel contour, potting the complete panel in a potting jig, machining the potting within tolerance for compression testing and quality control using NDI and dimensional verification. The finished panels have been shipped in custom crates which store the panel throughout its logistic and testing program. From KVE, the panels have been shipped to Premium AEROTEC GmbH (PAG) for assembly of the metallic parts also described in this report. PAG shipped the panels to the test location at Imperial College London (ICL).