Composite alternative to the Airbus A350's flap levers

Abstract

The aerospace industry is known for its perpetual quest for performance at moderate cost. One of the most exciting recent technology in this quest are composites materials. The latter tend to increasingly replace metallic structures in new aircraft design. In this context, this master thesis focuses on the design of the Airbus A350’s flap levers in composite materials. This work aims to highlight potential composite solutions that enable cost savings in the manufacturing process. In addition, the composite design should not dramatically impact the mass of the levers. This challenging design work is tackled by the development of an iterative process. The latter relies on a first solution inspired from the current metallic part, which is successively simplified and improved. At each iteration, the proposed design is analysed and critically adapted. The mechanical behaviour of the parts is assessed through the use of finite element methods. The stacking sequences are studied and their feasibility is discussed. It results that the iterative process developed is effective at assessing the potential cost benefit of a composite solution for each part considered. Major issues can be rapidly highlighted and solved. In this work, a potential cost benefit is discovered for three of the four levers studied. It appeared that high complexity of the part is a major brake on the composite design. Nevertheless, several simplification techniques were developed and applied to the considered parts to improve their composite solutions.