Computer Aided Design and Finite Element Analysis using SolidWorks for an

airplane fuselage with specific symmetric angle-ply composite shell of arbitrary

thickness and unknown radial stiffener support nor material.
Given:
E1=45 GPa
E2=16 GPa
12=0.27
21=0.097
G12=4 GPa
Fuselage is 40 ft long and diameter of 10 ft.
shell has 5 layers of orientations (60/-60/90/-60/60)
Fuselage is fixed on one end. Torque of 10000 ft-lb on other end. Distributed load on upper
half of 20000 lbf. Internal pressure of 10psi.

Required:

Thickness of fuselage shell (i.e. the composite laminae).

Number, material and geometry of radial stiffeners (i.e. stringers).

Such that:
1. max vertical displacement less than 5 inches.
2. Max radial displacement less than 5 degrees.

Solution:
Design procedure/log:
sketch a circle of 10ft diameter and extruding a surface 40ft from it.
Starting a new SolidWorks study(tried 2d simplification as plane strain but couldn't define the section
surface)
We define the shell by our extruded surface and set it as a composite. Set all plies with same material
and input the given data in the question, with the 1,2 and 3 coordinates replaced by x, y and z
respectively. And values in the 3 direction being equal to their counterparts in the 2 direction because of
assumed in plane symmetry for the plies. The given orientations are entered and their thickness is set as
0.02 mm thickness each (attempted parametrization of thickness but got lot with the parameter linking).

Now go back to features and add an axis to the cylinder around which to apply the torque. We then add
a planer surface to one end of the fuselage, closing one side of the fuselage and use it along with the
added axes to apply the given torque of 120000 lb.in.
We then Apply the internal pressure of 10 psi, adding a coordinate system with z as the fuselage axis
from features to use for the bearing load which we'll try to model as sinusoidal(instead of parabolic),
(tried adding a middle plain to apply the load to only half the fuselage but didn't work) so will double
the bearing load since now Ill be applying it to the whole fuselage instead of only half, so we apply
40000 lbf.
We run simulation, problem because the disk we closed one part of the fuselage with to apply the
torque in has zero thickness which should be fixed, so I set it rigid and then just excluded it from
analysis altogether. We run the simulation;

The stress and strain and displacement readings are off the charts, the fuselage basically doesn't only
explode, but inverts upon itself.
Therefore, we go back to the lamina thickness and change it to 0.2mm instead of the previous 0.02. The
results are more reasonable now,

Albeit far from acceptable for a design, the maximum deflection is about 1 meter. So we now add
stringers and see what happens.
The stringers are added as L shapes part of the original extruded surface, they're modeled as thin and
assigned thickness of 1mm, and dimensions of 2 by 5in, and material of 1023 carbon steel sheet with
E=205 GPa. We add 8 of them axisymmetrically around the fuselage.
We then add connections between the stringers and the fuselage as the software advises, bonding them
with thin/rigid adhesives/welds which don't allow shear strain. After bonding the 8 ridges to the
fuselage the simulation runs without problems and yields the following results:

the
maximum
deflection
is still
around
1m, or
850mm
which is
around 30
in.

we change the thickness of the stringers into 0.05 in and the composite plys' into 0.2in each. And the
result becomes:

we can see the max deflection in the model is 1 deg, well under the max 5 degrees rotation given. The
maximum von-Mises stress in the model is 33.7MPa, also nowhere near any tensile strengths in Gpa's...
So finally, it seems the design is acceptable.

Design parameters summary:

Stringers:
Number: 8
Material: 1023 carbon steel sheet with
E= 205 GPa
Yield strength= 282MPa
thicknesses:
Single ply: 0.2 in.
Total laminate: 1 in.
Stringers: 0.05 in.
other model dimensions:
Attached separately as an engineering part drawing.
response to loading:
Max deflection in model = 0.75 in
Max angular deflection= 1deg
Max strain=0.00033
Max von Mises stress= 33.7MPa
Min factor of safety= 7.22

Conclusion:
The current design is about one fifth of the main two deflection limits set in the design requirements.
Hence, this design is acceptable.

Soft copy of the SolidWorks modeled parts can be found on:

http://grabcad.com/library/computer-aided-design-and-finite-element-analysis-using-solidworks-for-anairplane-fuselage-with-specific-symmetric-angle-ply-composite-shell-of-arbitrary-thickness-andunknown-radial-stiffener-support-nor-material
http://grabcad.com/library/computer-aided-design-and-finite-element-analysis-using-solidworks-for-anairplane-fuselage-with-specific-symmetric-angle-ply-composite-shell-of-arbitrary-thickness-andunknown-radial-stiffener-support-nor-material/files