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Composite materials damage behaviour is, nowadays, extensively investigated in the frame of aerospace research programmes. Among the several failure mechanisms which can affect composites, delamination can be considered as the most critical one, especially when combined to compressive loading conditions. In this context, nanofillers can represent an effective way to increase the composites fracture toughness with a consequent reduction of the delamination onset and evolution. Hence, in this paper, the toughening effect of the nanofillers on the delamination growth in composite material panels, subject to compressive load, has been numerically studied. A validated robust numerical procedure for the prediction of the delamination growth in composite materials panel, named SMXB and based on the VCCT-Fail release approach, has been used to perform numerical analyses by considering two different types of nanofillers. Reference material, without nanofillers insertion, has been used as benchmark in order to assess the capability of nanofillers to enhance the fracture toughness in composite laminates.

Additive manufacturing (AM) enables the production of customised and sophisticated components; Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) is a widely used and cost-effective AM technique. Nevertheless, the use of FFF for aerospace and aeronautical applications is often impeded by the inadequate surface finish it imparts to the produced components. This work aims to demonstrate that, with careful calibration of process parameters and build orientation, FFF can produce aerospace components with low surface roughness. This could enable FFF to be used in aeronautics, allowing the benefits of lightweighting structures using metal replacement thermoplastics and variable infill to be exploited. In this study, rudder sections of a UAV tailplane were produced using FFF and lightened through variable internal infills, thin thicknesses, and a polymer for metal replacement. By setting different printing processes, a configuration was identified that exhibits suitable surface roughness for aerospace applications and a weight saving of approximately 50% compared to an equivalent metal volume.

Increasing the impact resistance properties of any transport vehicle is a real engineering challenge. This challenge is addressed in this paper by proposing a high-performing structural solution. Hence, the performance, in terms of improvement of the energy absorbing characteristics and the reduction of the peak accelerations, of highly efficient shock absorbers integrated in key locations of a minibus chassis have been assessed by means of numerical crash simulations. The high efficiency of the proposed damping system has been achieved by improving the current design and manufacturing process of the state-of-the-art shock absorbers. Indeed, the proposed passive safety system is composed of additive manufactured, hybrid polymer/composite (Polypropylene/Composite Fibres Reinforced Polymers—PP/CFRP) shock absorbers. The resulting hybrid component combines the high stiffness-to-mass and strength-to-mass ratios characteristic of the composites with the capability of the PP to dissipate energy by plastic deformation. Moreover, thanks to the Additive Manufacturing (AM) technique, low-mass and low-volume highly-efficient shock-absorbing sandwich structures can be designed and manufactured. The use of high-efficiency additively manufactured sandwich shock absorbers has been demonstrated as an effective way to improve the passive safety of passengers, achieving a reduction in the peak of the reaction force and energy absorbed in the safety cage of the chassis’ structure, respectively, up to up to 30 kN and 25%.