Structural repair on a composite aircraft fuselage damaged by fire.

Composite materials have been used on aircraft for decades with tremendous benefits. Through the use of these advanced materials we have seen a great increase in the aircraft’s efficiency, while improving the strength of the aircraft. Unfortunately due to the complexity of this material, it has not been used in large structural components such as the fuselage until very recently. Because of this, there are still some unknown aspects of implementing this material which have not yet been researched. One example that demonstrates this is a large section of an aircraft’s composite fuselage structure which has sustained fire damage. The main difficulties here are the unknown extent of damage caused by the fire, the unproven repair methods, and the durability of the repair patch itself. This report outlines some of these challenges as well as offers two different repair methods that are then analyzed using CATIAs FEA suite.