ANALYSIS OF RIVETING CARRYING CAPACITY FOR COMPOSITE TAIL SHAFT OF HELICOPTER TRANSMISSION SYSTEM

Abstract

The composite material has the advantages of high specific strength and high specific stiffness, which could reduce the structural weight effectively when it was applied to the tail shaft of helicopter transmission system. The connection with the composite tail shaft and flange usually adopt riveting, the riveted area was the weakness of the tail shaft. In this paper, the riveting analysis model of composite tail shaft and flange was established by ANSYS ACP software. The Tsai-Wu failure criterion was adopted for the failure of the riveted joints. The riveting structure lost its function of carrying capacity when the failure zone of the riveting was more than the coverage area of gasket. By comparing with the results of static torsion test, the calculated results were in good agreement with the experimental results.

Keywords

• Helicopter transmission system;Tail shaft;Composite material;Riveting carrying capacity