Structural design of a load carrying member

Load: bending moment, shear force, torsional

moment (M
x
, M
z
, V
x
, V
z
, M
y
)
Design: The member must fail at the design
load

Design load = factor of safety X limit load
Factory of safety = 1.5
Limit load = highest possible load expected
during its entire service life

U.S. Department of Transportation
FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION

ADVISORY CIRCULAR

Subject: INTERPRETATION OF FAILURE
STATIC STRUCTURAL TEST PROGRAMS

4.0 INTERPRETATION OF FAILURE



4.0 INTERPRETATION OF FAILURE.

In the interest of standardization and to eliminate the wide
variety of requirements imposed on different applicants by
the various Aircraft Certification Offices, the following
definition should be used by all Aircraft Certification Offices
to assess the acceptability of a failure for small airplanes in
a structural static test to ultimate load:

A structural static failure has occurred when the article being
tested cannot sustain an increase in load, or cannot sustain
the required load for at least 3 seconds.

Local failures are allowable if occurrence is beyond limit
load and if the article can reach and sustain ultimate load.
The process of
answering these
questions is called
design
W
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A19.3 Wing strength requirements:

Two major strength requirements must be satisfied in the
structural design of a wing:

1) Under the limit loads, no part of the structure must be
stressed beyond the yield strength of the material

2) The structure shall also carry design loads without rupture
or collapse or in other words failure

The design load = 1.5 times the limit load

Aircraft factor of safety of 1.5 is rather low compared to other
fields of structural design
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Safety of the airframe structure is the
paramount design requirement

Therefore, the correctness of the theoretical
design must be checked by extensive static
and dynamic tests to verify whether the
structure will carry the design loads without
failure
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A19.4 Wing stress analysis method:

In many previous chapters of this book, internal
stresses were calculated for both statically determinate
and statically indeterminate airframe structures

In a statically determinate structure, the internal
stresses (loads) can be found by the use of static
equilibrium equations alone

The overall structural arrangement of members is
necessary, but the size and shape of members are not
required

In other words, design consists of finding internal
stresses and then selecting sizes and shapes of
structural members to carry that stress safely and
efficiently
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In a statically indeterminate structure,
additional equations beyond the equations of
static equilibrium are necessary to find the
internal stresses

These additional equations are obtained from
a consideration of structural deformations

This means that size, shape and material of
the structural members must be known
before the internal stresses can be
determined
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This fact means that a trial and error method is necessary for
the stress analysis of a statically indeterminate structure

Another important fact to be remembered is that a statically
determinate structure has just enough members to produce
stability

If one member fails, the whole structure will fail

Whereas a statically indeterminate structure has one or
more redundant members than are necessary for static
stability

Thus in the event of failure of some members, the loads will
get redistributed and the structure, as a whole, will not fail

The statically indeterminate structure is intrinsically a fail-
safe structure

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In general, statically indeterminate
structures can be made lighter and
with smaller overall deflections

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Methods of stress analysis for statically indeterminate
wing structure

Two general methods are commonly used

1) Flexural beam theory with simplifying assumptions

2) Solving for redundant forces and stresses by
applying the principles of the elastic theory by various
methods such as virtual work, strain energy etc

The second method is no doubt more accurate since
less assumptions are necessary

However, this requires computing facility to solve a
large number of simultaneous equations

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Stress analysis of thin-skin-multiple stringer cantilever wings

The most common type of wing construction is the multiple
stringer type as shown here

Such a structure is statically indeterminate to many degrees
w.r.t internal stresses



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Stress analysis of thin-skin-multiple stringer cantilever wings

Fortunately, structural tests of complete wing structure show
that the simple beam theory gives stresses which check
fairly well with measured stresses if:

1) the wing span is several times the wing chord
2) the sweep back is minor
3) the wing is free of major cut outs and discontinuities

Boeing wing testing
video 777
Boeing wing testing
video 787
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Assumptions-Beam Theory:

In this chapter the wing bending and shear stresses will be calculated using the
unsymmetrical beam theory

The two main assumptions of beam theory are:

1) Transverse sections of the beam originally plane before bending
remain plane after bending of the beam
2) The longitudinal stress distribution is directly proportional to strain
and therefore, from assumption (1) is also linear. This assumption
actually means that each longitudinal elements acts as if it were
separate from every other element and that Hooks law holds,
namely, that the stress-strain curve is linear

This assumption means that longitudinal strains vary directly as the distance
from neutral axis or the strain variation in the cross section across the neutral
axis is linear with distance from N.A
c
y
= o y,
Strain
variation
f
1) Transverse sections of the beam originally
plane before bending remain plane after
bending of the beam

c
y
= o y,
Strain variation
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Assumption-1 Neglects the strain due to shear stresses in
the longitudinal elements of the beam

This is commonly know as shear lag effect

Shear lag effects are not important except near major cut-
outs or other major discontinuities and also near locations of
large concentrated loads
Deformation
due to shear
alone
Deformation
due to
bending
alone
Deformation
due to
combined
bending and
shear
P
A
A
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2) The longitudinal stress distribution is directly
proportional to strain and therefore, from
assumption (1) is also linear. This assumption
actually means that each longitudinal element
acts as if it were separate from every
other element and that Hooks law holds,
namely, that the stress-strain curve is linear

In the wing structure assumption (2) is usually not
correct if elastic and inelastic buckling of skin and
stringers occur before the failure of the wing

If buckling occurs prior to wing failure the errors in
beam theory are corrected by the use of so-called
effective area of cross-section which is discussed
later
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A19.9 Physical action of wing section in resisting external bending
forces from zero to failing load

Fig A19.17 shows a common type of wing cross section structural
arrangement generally referred to as the distributed flange type

The corner members (a) and (b) are considerably larger in area
than the stringers (c)

The skin is relatively thin

Now assume that the wing is subjected to a gradually increasing
bending moment which places the upper skin (upper portion of the
cross section) in compression and bottom portion in tension

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Under small loading the compressive stresses on
the skin of the top surface will be small and the
stresses will be directly proportional to strain. i.e
the stresses in the corner members a & b, stresses
in the stringer (c) and stresses in the skin are all
proportional to their respective strain values. Each
one of them act independently to resist
compressive stresses due to bending



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The compressive bending stresses can be
computed from the beam formula



where
I
x
will include all the cross section area

x
b
x
M
Z
I
| |
o =
|
\ .
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As the external load is increased, the compressive stresses
on the thin sheets start to buckle the sheet panels

After this buckling, the buckled skin looses rapidly its further
compressive load carrying ability as the loading on the wing
is increased

In the buckled skin, the stress is no longer proportional to
strain

However, the inability of the buckled top skin to carry further
load does not lead to wing failure as these additional loads
are transferred to the stringer and corner members

Insert buckling of stiffened panel autocad
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The stringers (c) are only supported transversely at wing
rib stations and are braced against buckling by the skin on
the top side

The stringers (c) resist the wing externally applied bending
moment by developing compressive stresses through
column action where the length of the column is the rib
spacing



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As the wing loading increases further the stringers
(c) suffer column buckling elastically

The buckled stringers (c) do not participate in
sharing any additional compressive load as the
wing loading is increased beyond this point

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However, because of the support of the
continuous skin the buckled stringers
continue to carry the buckling load as the
load is increased further
These additional loads (which the buckled
skin and the buckled stringer would have
carried had they not buckled) are
transferred to the corner members in
addition to their normal share of loading

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The corner members are braced on two sides; on
the top by the skin and on the side by the web.
They are also supported at the rib stations

Therefore, the corner flanges cannot suffer column
buckling due to the two-sided support. If it bends
perpendicular to the top skin, the web attachment
on the side will prevent it and vice-versa



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The corner members eventually will fail by
local crippling



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After crippling failure
it cannot resist any
additional load and
the wing cross section
fails by complete
failure of its
compressive side

Boeing 777 wing video
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The bending moment at which the corner members
in the compression side fail by crippling is the
ultimate bending resistance of the beam section

How do we calculate this ultimate bending resistance of the beam section?