In this thesis persistent problems with the shock isolating behaviour of the Jockey Seat are identified and analysed. These Jockey Seat are used on fast planning crafts like the FRISC which is in service with the Royal Netherlands Navy. Past research and existing technology were presented along with two redesign directions. Furthermore, several tools to further analyse the problem in both a static and dynamic setting have been developed.

The scope of this thesis is to improve the production of tire Single Aisle (SA) aircraft family carbon fibre outboard flaps produced at Airbus Stade. Currently, the SA outboard flaps are in insufficient quality and many need to be repaired after manufacturing due to manufacturing defects In order to save time and money, a new tooling concept needs to be developed which can produce panels of good quality. The causes of manufacturing defects were previously unknown So as a first step, the causes have to be identified for the defects of the SA outboard flaps. Finding the causes and setting the requirements for the tooling topics of this thesis...

first investigation into identifying challenges for up-scaling, proposing and testing new ultrasonic welding concepts and utilization of the best concept in the design of a sequential welding procedure for a practical application.

The aerospace industry is looldng to reduce their enviromnental impact through projects like the Clean Sky Joint Technology Initiative. Two measures to help achieve this goal are to reduce the aircraft weight so the emissions during flight decrease and to increase the manufacturing efficiency. Composites often offer lighter solutions and new manufacturing possibilities. Especially thermoplastic composites, which have the ability to melt and fuse, offer many interesting possibihties in manufactming and structural integration. Ultrasonic welding (USW) is a fusion bonding process which utilizes the ability of thermoplastic composites to form a fusion bond. USW has extremely short process cycles, does not introduce any foreign materials regardless of
the composition of the samples to be welded, is energy efficient and has the ability to be on-line monitored, providing joint quality information during welding. With USW it is possible to create fast, clean and consistent welds in lap shear samples. However the step to up-scaling of the process has yet to be made. If found possible, USW might contribute to clean joints with strongly reduced processing times and therefore reduce the environmental impact...

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the feasibihty of manufacturing polyurethane glass fibre laminates with vacuum infusion. Thermoset resins classically used for infusion have been polyesters, vinyl esters and epoxies due to their long pot life. Polyurethanes have faster reaction kinetics and therefore the cycle time could be reduced. Additionally, it is expected that polyurethanes bring improved fatigue and impact resistance properties which would enable a re-design of the structures,
reducing its thickness. Therefore, the manufacturing costs of large structures, such as wind turbine blades, could be reduced...

The V-Cart project was a coUaboration between Donkervoort Automobielen B.V. and Delft technical university, with a common goal to design a composite chassis for the next generation of cars. This research originates from the need of a reusable adhesive bond for connecting large structural composite parts. Unfortunately, the collaboration ended during the research. This thesis focuses on the design of the reusable bond itself, with application in a small sportscar chassis in mind.

In the aircraft industry residual stresses have been utilized for long time to increase the fatigue performance of structural elements by cold hole expansion and shot peening. Next to these intentional stresses, residual stresses are also present in the structure as a result of the manufacturing process and aircraft assembly. It is well-known that tensile residual stresses decrease fatigue life, while on the other hand compressive residual stresses increase fatigue life. Despite of this, the aerospace industry still does not give credit to residual stress as a design parameter, mainly because of the poor correlation between experimental and predicted crack growth rates. It is believed that this is mainly due to confounding factors like heat affected
zones in welding, two-dimensional crack fronts, sub-surface inititation, multiple cracking and an inaccurate residual stress estimation in the experiments.