Internship Assignment “Mechanical testing of the welded composite joints”

What will you be doing? In the aerospace sector, there is an ever-growing interest in manufacturing and assembling the aircraft parts more sustainably. Herein welded thermoplastic joints offer unprecedented advantages. This is partly thanks to recyclability and remanufacturability of the thermoplastic composites. Furthermore, welding eliminates the need to use mechanical fasteners, which decreases weight of the joint, and it also avoids long cure cycles needed for traditional adhesives and avoids issues with certification, decreasing manufacturing costs. Welded joints need to be mechanically tested for process development and qualification. Single lap shear (SLS) and short beam shear (SBS) testing are often used for this purpose in industry and often also in academia. Although these tests are easy to perform and commonly used, they have shortcomings. For instance, SLS test leads to a nonuniform distribution of shear stresses and high peel stresses at the ends of the weld. Stress state also depends on the thickness of the specimen due to thickness affecting the bending induced during SLS testing. These issues mentioned necessitates investigation of alternative testing methods and development of tools to better evaluate the results of the commonly used SLS and SBS tests. This assignment focuses exactly on this. The assignment will involve: - A literature survey on the commonly applied and alternative mechanical testing methods for welded composite joints - Manufacturing laminates for welding tests and welding them - Mechanical tests: both commonly used and (proposed/developed) alternative methods - Development of (FEA) tools to simulate the stress state in various mechanical test methods. Result A (thesis) report covering the items listed in the description and a software tool. Duration of the internship? 6-10 months in Marknesse. What do we expect from you? Mechanical or Aerospace Engineering Bachelor’s degree Basic understanding of composites and mechanics of materi