SONACA, an aerospace company, has as core business the development, manufacturing and assembly of aerospace wing and fuselage structures and their associated subsystems. Sonaca is also actively involved in aerospace applications with the development of innovative composite solutions for space launchers using the most advanced 3D orthogonal weaving reinforcements. The development of robust modelling tools to assess the strength and lifetime of composites, allowing to optimize their production process, is therefore of particular interest.

The simulation of the behaviour of textile and 3D reinforced composites is scientifically challenging because: (i) it involves a complex local material behaviour of the phases (plasticity, cracking, decohesions), with complex and intricate microstructural geometries, (ii) the problem is intrinsically multi-scale with the smallest scale being that of the constituents and the largest scale the scale of the produced part, (iii) the manufacturing process involves multi-physical couplings that may induce cracking and that influence the behaviour of the produced parts and their lifetime.

Personnel:Anqi Li, Joris Remmers, Marc Geers (PI), Thierry Massart (ULB, PI)
Funding:European union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement nr. 764636
Partners:SONACA
Website:https://www.lacan.upc.edu/ProTechTion/