Aerospace structures have employed 3D woven composites in a variety of applications, such as fan blades in the CFM International LEAP (Leading Edge Aviation Propulsion) engine (SAFRAN and GE) [15 ].
The fan is the first rotating element in contact with the air at the entrance of a turbojet engine. It consists of a number of blades arranged on a hub and rotating at the same speed as the rotor. Aircraft fan blades are manufactured using 3D fiber reinforced composites [16 ]. To demonstrate our methodology based on an offline/online strategy, we used numerical simulations of damaged blades to construct an offline database. The literature on numerical modeling of 3D woven composites reveals that several noteworthy investigations have been conducted in the past 20 years [17 (link)].
The foreign object damage panel (FOD panel) used in our case study is a representative substructure of the fan blade chord of dimensions 800 × 350 × 50 mm 3 as shown in Figure 2 and it is used in a V&V (verification and validation) process by the engine OEM (original equipment manufacturer) to evaluate the designed and manufactured hybrid material regarding bird strike and its induced damage. The FOD panel is considered in the European project MORPHO (H2020 EU Project) [18 ].
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