Characterization of Adhesive and Fastener Carbon Fiber Composite Joints Based on a Microstrip Transmission Line Method

Abstract

Nowadays, there exists a tendency for replacing typical metallic materials in the aerial platforms for nonmetallic ones. However, this arises many questions, for example, how they react against Electromagnetic Enviromental Effects (E3), where we can count lightning effects among many others. Due to this, the aim of this work is to characterize different type of joints commonly used in the aerospace industry for Carbon Fiber Composite (CFC) fuselages. This analysis is crucial in order to figure out possible electrical discontinuities that could affect to the electromagnetic behaviour of an aircraft. Having that in mind, a flexible measurement setup based on a microstrip line is proposed, where different CFC test samples are evaluated.