DESIGN AND TESTS OF AERONAUTICAL COMPOSITE STRUCTURES

摘要

During last years our choice to use composite materials to develop aeronautical products was, initially, only an opportunity to deepen a new engineering approach for the students of our University; even if we decided to approach to this field with only an educational objective, we used, as exercises, real projects derived from the industrial context and often with practical experiences. After about five years of studies, parallel to the generic study of theoretical and practical problems of composites applied to aeronautical field, we decided to apply this know how to develop a demonstrator of University capabilities in the emergent field of Unmanned Vehicles. Federica, the name of a full composite mini UAV already introduced in other workshops (see references), was the first project totally developed from our university staff (directed by the Prof. A.F. Accardo). Today days, we are working parallel to two news projects on composites fields: a new UAV (DIANA) commissioned from the Italian Army, and a big facility to test different aeronautical structures and test articles, commissioned from an important Italian company of the aeronautical field involved in international partnerships.