Test set-up for the fatigue life assessment of complex lightweight structures under combined loading

• Applicant: Professor Dr.-Ing. Peter Horst
• Co-Applicants: Professor Dr.-Ing. Klaus Dilger; Bernhard Wiedemann
• Subject Area: Lightweight Construction, Textile Technology
• Term: from 2008 to 2011
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 111780029

It is the main goal of the proposal project to design and build a Test Set-up for the fatigue life assessment of complex lightweight structures under combined loading as required in the DFG-Großgeräteinitiative. The combined loading consists of combined tension/compression and shear which is to say that buckling may also be seen as a cause for fatigue damage. The basic type of build-up structure is a stiffened panel (possibly curved), but it should also be possible to test other types of structures. The general goal of the test set-up is to allow for tests under combined constant or variable amplitude loading in order to simulate conditions, which are near to realistic loading, both on a local as well as on full scale. For this purpose a completely new design has been developed which allows to yield good combined loading conditions at reasonable costs.The second goal of the project is to allow research projects, which require such a test set-up. Six short project descriptions are given in section 3 to demonstrate this. In all cases the important feature of the new set-up is that it will enable the proposers to acquire insight into the application to complex structures and relatively complex loading, which can not be found in less complex tests. This promises a large step in the quality of results both in experiments itself and in the theoretical models developed/investigated. Three proposers which are heavily involved in such research are joined here, but from the described projects it becomes obvious that also other partners will benefit from them.

• DFG Programme: Major Instrumentation Initiatives
• Major Instrumentation: Test set-up for the fatigue life assessment of complex lightweight structures under combined loading
• Instrumentation Group: 2070 Hilfsgeräte und Meßeinrichtungen für Werkzeugmaschinen