Development of a generic repair joint for certification of bonded composite repairs

This paper describes the development of a generic repair joint to generate design information for certification of bonded composite repairs. The aim is to provide disbond growth data for bonded repairs over a wide range of operating environments. Experiment and analytical and finite-element analyses described herein show that this disbond growth data is transferable to a higher, more complex, specimen in the hierarchy of certification testing - the generic structural detail specimen. Excellent agreement between measured disbond growth rates was achieved. Hence an important step in certification studies of highly loaded bonded-composite repairs has been established. (C) 1999 Aeronautical Maritime Research Laboratory. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.