The design considerations and failure analysis of a pin-loaded hole in an orthotrophic laminate

Abstract

General design considerations for pin-loaded holes in orthotropic plates are reported. As a specific design case, the pinned lug connection on the drag-strut of the Lockheed L-10ll was redesigned using Hy-E 1046 AE graphite/epoxy. Six proposed designs were manufactured and tested for ultimate tensile strength. Failure analysis was performed using a new variation of the Whitney-Nuismer stress averaging technique in conjunction with finite element modeling. Correlation between predicted strength and experimental strength was found to be good and is compared with other failure models. Parametric studies of geometry and material variation were performed for the pinned lug case.