Abstract: The structure parts of carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRP) were widely used in the aerospace field. Usually, the mechanical connection method of screwing or riveting was employed after processing through-hole of structure parts. This method increased the connection weight and connection complexity of the structure parts. However, the mechanical connection method for itself threaded hole of CFRP structure parts had the problems of poor wear resistance, poor load bearing capacity, low connection strength, easy thread breakage and poor fatigue resistance and so on, which greatly limited the connection application of CFRP threaded hole. In recent years, the connection method of wire thread insert had appeared in the mechanical connection of CFRP structure parts, which partially improved the connection strength of CFRP threaded hole. In this paper, to analyse the connection performance of MT700 CFRP with the wire thread insert, based on the principle analysis of wire thread insert, the repeated disassembly test and the pulling-out load strength test, the connection performance of wire thread insert and the failure type of CFRP threaded hole were analyzed in detail. The results show that compared with the CFRP threaded hole without wire thread insert, the CFRP threaded hole with wire thread insert can significantly enhance the load bearing connection performance and wear resistance, improve the pulling-out force by 26% and stability, reduce the damage risk of the threaded hole, as well as expand the connection application range of CFRP threaded hole.

Key words: carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRP), wire thread insert, connection performance, pulling-out force, failure type