BMI Sandwich Wing Box Analysis and Test
A composite sandwich single bay wing box test article was developed by Northrop Grumman and tested recently at NASA Langley Research Center. The objectives for the wing box development effort were to provide a demonstration article for manufacturing scale up of structural concepts related to a high speed transport wing, and to validate the structural performance of the design. The box concept consisted of highly loaded composite sandwich wing skins, with moderately loaded composite sandwich spars. The dimensions of the box were chosen to represent a single bay of the main wing box, with a spar spacing of 30 inches, height of 20 inches constant depth, and length of 64 inches. The bismaleimide facesheet laminates and titanium honeycomb core chosen for this task are high temperature materials able to sustain a 300F service temperature. The completed test article is shown in Figure 1. The tests at NASA Langley demonstrated the structures ability to sustain axial tension and compression loads in excess of 20,000 lb/in, and to maintain integrity in the thermal environment. Test procedures, analysis failure predictions, and test results are presented.