| Abstract: | The increasing demand for fatigue life extension of both military and civilian aircraft has led to advances in repair technology for cracked metallic structures. Conventional structural repairs may significantly degrade the aircraft fatigue life and lower its aerodynamic performance. Adhesively bonded composite reinforcement is a new technology of great importance due to the remarkable advantages obtained, such as mechanical efficiency and repair time and cost reduction. In this article, bonded composite patch repairs were designed for quick application to aircraft under emergency conditions, such as aircraft battle damage repair (ABDR). A formulated method was developed, to be applied when damage has to be restored quickly, without restrictions to safety of flight. Different damage cases were investigated using finite-element analysis (FEA), taking into account specific parameters of the structure under repair. Based on the FEA results, a quick design procedure using composite patch repairs for the most frequent damage cases is proposed. |
