Validation Approach for Robust Primary Carbon Fiber-Reinforced Plastic Structures

Abstract

Current industrial demands for fiber composite primary structures in the area of aeronautics require innovative, experimentally validated simulation methods and tools, to support a cost and weight efficient design and to reduce their time-to-market utilizing virtual (simulation based) testing. Reliable application of numerical analysis in upfront design challenges not only verification (“solve the equation right”) aspects but also the validation of the numerical methods (“solve the right equations”) with trustworthy experimental investigations. This chapter provides an overview on different aspects of the validation process, starting with a concise insight in the terminology in modeling and computational simulation, followed by a description of the selected approach to validate structures at different levels of detail, the comparison of numerical results with experimentally extracted data and finally a brief outlook with respect to transferability prospects and limitations. These aspects will be reflected exemplarily utilizing numerical and experimental investigations on buckling and postbuckling of stiffened CFRP panels.