Abstract
Carbon composite materials of high strength and stiffness have been widely applied to the critical structural components of aerospace vehicles all over the world. In order to obtain the fundamental data for designing and processing, substructural models of aircraft rudder sections were experimentally fabricated as CFRP skin/aluminum honeycomb sandwitch structures and the static flexural tests were carried out on these models.
The materials for carbon fiber/epoxy prepregs and adhesive systems, and the processes of angleply laminating, assembling by secondary bonding, and tooling techniques were investigated.
In addition, the comparison between the tests on the CFRP model and aluminum one indicated the feasibility of the weight reduction over 25% by applying CFRP to the aircraft structure.
