Jobs & Karriere

Currently, imperfection sensitive shell structures prone to buckling are designed according the NASA SP 8007 guideline using the conservative lower bound curve. The guideline dates from 1968, and the structural behaviour of composite material is not considered appropriately, in particular since the imperfection sensitivity of shells made from such materials depends on the lay-up design. The buckling loads of CFRP structures may vary by a factor of about 3 just by changing the lay-up. This is not considered in the NASA SP 8007, which allows designing only so called "black metal" structures.
The Space industry demand for lighter and cheaper launcher transport systems. Here is a high need for a new precise and efficient design approach for imperfection sensitive composite structures which allows significant reduction of structural weight and design cost. For relevant architectures of cylindrical and conical launcher structures this study will investigate a new approach called Single Perturbation-Load-Approach (SPLA), originally developed by Hühne (2008), which guarantees an effective design exploiting the concept of worst geometric imperfection.
The main focus of the work is on further developments of the Single-Perturbation-Approach which is expected to be a future design approach. The study should develop answers for some questions regarding the SPLA (minimum perturbation load, limits of the approach, consideration of other types of imperfection etc.). The new concept will be finally validated by experimental test results.

The work contributes to the DESICOS project: www.desicos.eu.