Structural Methods to Account for Porosity/Voids in Composites

Advanced structural methods that account for manufacturing defects in composite parts are needed to enable accurate assessment of their capability and useful life and enhance current design and maintenance practices. The defects must be accurately measured and the measurements must be converted into structural models to assess the effects of the defects. In particular, wrinkles and porosity/voids are typical defects in carbon/epoxy and glass/epoxy composite aircraft flight-critical structures. The authors demonstrate new analysis methods based on non-destructive detection and finite element modeling of the defects in composite specimens. Failure predictions and subsequent test correlations for test articles with porosity/voids are presented.