Abstract: Based on the structural characteristics of a class of typical civil aircraft door, several sandwich structures are designed and compared. Several conditions of sandwich structure are considered, i.e. structure of different inner and outer skin thickness, structure of different honeycomb height, structure of adding and no reinforcing plate, structure with and without honeycomb groove and raising the height of the local cellular. A finite element model of the honeycomb sandwich door is developed. A contrastive analysis of distorted displacement for different structure is obtained. The calculation implies that the thickness of inner skin and honeycomb height plays a dominant role on the door stiffness, and that there is a certain inner skin thickness and honeycomb height for the door, which will make door′s bending deformation in cruise state meet the requirement. The analysis results and conclusion provide some design guide and reference value for the same kind of aircraft door.

Key words: civil aircraft, door, honeycomb sandwich, stiffness, the finite element