Stress analysis of splice joint of the aircraft bottom wing skin by Finite Element Method

This paper investigates the maximum stress concentrated part of the splice joint of an aircraft bottom wing skin due to tensile loading. Wings are the aerofoils attached to each side of the fuselage to produce lift force. Joints are inevitable in any large structure like an aircraft wing. Splicing is normally used to retain a clean aerodynamic surface of the skin for most of the aircraft structure. This analysis considers the wing box with a bottom skin splice joint. The wing box comprises of two spar beams, three ribs, stiffeners covered with skin plate. In this paper the chord wise splicing of wing skin is considered for a detailed analysis. The splicing is multi row riveted joint under the action of tensile in plane load due to wing bending. The stress analysis of the joint is carried out to compute the stresses at rivet holes due to By pass load, bearing load and secondary bending. The splice is optimized to minimize the rivet hole local stress. A finite element analysis is carried out to evaluate the stresses. Analyses were performed by MSC PATRAN and NASTRAN software.