LIMA, Felipe Silva.
Resumo:
Since ancient times, human beings have been seeking to enhance the use of materials in their favor. In the current technological state, industries, such as aeronautics, have intensified their search for composite material structures due to high structural and/or thermal performance with low weight, in addition to the possibility of manipulating material properties based on their intrinsic characteristics, in order to meet certain design constraints. Despite the progress made, there are still some obstacles associated with the large number of possible solutions for an optimized project that do not necessarily go through appreciation, given the high experimental cost. In this sense, associated with the need for knowledge on new materials, simulator programs were boosted and gave a powerful current tool, for predicting the behavior of composites and for evaluating new structural arrangements. Therefore, this study aims to analyze computational simulations of a composite wing spar with the company Stratus Aircraft and to propose adjustments in the configuration in order to improve the structural efficiency of the system. For this purpose, ANSYS finite element analysis software was used to construct models with different cross sections, constituent materials and stacking sequence. Usual techniques of discretization are employed, using the finite element method, through the ANSYS program. Subsequently, these models were submitted to the simulations of real static situations and, from these, it was possible to verify the structural performance. The results were obtained by varying the cross sections, as well as the constituent materials and the stacking sequence. For the cases where there was a change in the structural profile, equivalent values of deflection and tension were better than in the original configuration, whereas the alteration of the constituent materials brought limited improvements to the specific combinations of materials, so that the tables play a relevant role in the mechanical performance, in addition, the specific modifications in the orientation sequence of the reinforcements did not contribute to the change in the original panorama of the model. The numerical results show that the analyzes under different configurations bring a considerable gain in the static behavior and, above all, they impel celerity in the definition of the most adequate composite wing spar.
