Repair of Ballistically Impacted Carbon Fibre Reinforced (CFR) Laminates

This report shows that thin monolithic Carbon Fibre Reinforced Panels impacted with small arms projectiles can be adhesively repaired restoring the damaged panel tensile strength to between 85% and 90% of the original. The compressive buckling strength of the thin CFC panels was found not to be significantly affected by ballistic impacting. The repair is primarily concerned with single-sided repairs utilizing a wet laminating repair patch technique and a precured patch technique. The repair research showed that for the particular impact damage sustained by the CFC panels there existed optimum repair patch physical parameters (i.e. overlap length and ply composition) for strength restorations above 85%. The research highlighted a number of repair techniques which adversely affected strength restorations. These techniques involved the removal of the damage area, use of precured square patches and the use of narrow repair patches.In addition to the damage panel repair analysis the report also details the construction and the testing of the laminates used in the research and attempts to present theoretical repair analysis which complements the actual repaired panel characteristics.