Saturday, May 12, 2012

COMPOSITE MATERIALS IN AIRCRAFT

Srinivas Rao | 12:05 AM | | | | Best Blogger Tips

B787 Fuselage section



Composite materials have been used in aviation and aircraft manufacturing for decades. There were used in civil and military aircraft primarily on secondary surfaces. What exactly are composite materials??





Composite materials are a combination of carbon or glass fibers with epoxy. Being light in weight, it adds to the performance of the aircraft in weighing less and effecting less fuel burn and increasing range and payload. They are known to have poor bearing strength as compared to metals. Notable failure of composite in aviation is the carbon composite tile failure on shuttle Columbia.

So far A320, A380 and B777 have been on the forefront of composite revolution with B787 taking the honors for being the first civil airliner to have more than 50% of total structural weight attributed to composites. Airbus  answer  A350 is slated to be in the same category with over 50% composite composition.

Safety concerns have been raised on the composition of composite material in airliners. Regulatory requirements are being put into place to have stringent operational and maintenance requirements to counter safety apprehensions.

Use of composites would continue to increase as the industry transitions from a predominantly metal composition to composite combinations. Where do you see the industry in the next decade or so in use of composite materials in aircraft???

2 comments:

  1. Hi it’s a great site..! If you want to know more about load cells please visit this site..
    Epoch electronic Aircraft weighing kit is designed primarily to cater the accurate weighing needs of aircraft and aerospace vehicles, but can be used for other precision weighing application as well as for the calibration of force generating machines.

    ReplyDelete
  2. That's sounds great that Aircraft is now covered by the Composite Material. We too are specialized in the Composite Wood Material. We make deck using these composite material. We also work with internationally to fulfill the needs of the Customer.

    Composite Material Exporter

    ReplyDelete