final assignment guan kai s3407535
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Master of aerospace and aviation engineering
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MC 025
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Engineering sustainability in aviation
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AERO 2461
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Assignment no.
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12/10/2014
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Roberto Sabatini
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Guan Kai S3407535
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Metallic Composite Materials in
Aviation Industry
ASSIGNMENT
AERO 2461 Engineering Sustainability in Aviation
(Master of aerospace and aviation engineering)
Prepared by
Guan Kai No. 3407535
1
Table of Contents
Acronyms .......................................................................................................................................... 2
1.0 Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 3
1.1 Background ................................................................................................................... 3
1.2 Aim ................................................................................................................................ 4
2.0 Material applications ......................................................................................................... 4
2.1 Fibre metal laminates (FMLs) ........................................................................................ 4
2.1.1 Aramid Reinforced Aluminum Laminate (ARALL) .............................................. 6
2.1.2 Glass Reinforced Aluminum Laminate (GRALE) ................................................. 7
2.1.3 Carbon fiber aluminum laminates (CARALL) ................................................... 11
2.1.4 Advantages of using FMLs ............................................................................... 11
2.1.5 Challenges of FMLs .......................................................................................... 12
2.2 Sandwich structure ..................................................................................................... 15
2.2.1 Bonded repair of composite sandwich structures .......................................... 16
2.2.2 Advantages of using sandwich structure ......................................................... 17
2.2.3 Challenges of sandwich structure ................................................................... 18
3.0 Case study ....................................................................................................................... 19
3.1 Model description ....................................................................................................... 19
3.2 Application analysis ..................................................................................................... 20
4.0 Benefits and challenges of light weight metallic composite materials ........................... 23
4.1 Benefits ....................................................................................................................... 23
4.2 Challenges ................................................................................................................... 25
5.0 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 26
6.0 Recommendations .......................................................................................................... 27
7.0 References ....................................................................................................................... 29
2
Acronyms
ARALL Aramid Reinforced Aluminum
Laminate
ATSB Australian Transport Safety
Bureau
CARALL Carbon fiber aluminum laminates
CFRP Carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer
FAA Federal Aviation Administration
FMLs Fibre metal laminates
GLARE Glass Reinforced Aluminum
Laminate
3
1.0 Introduction
1.1 Background
Nowadays, traveling by air costs much less than decades before. As the
increasing of low cost carriers, people could even use $10 to travel between
Sydney and Melbourne (JetStar activities). As the transportations link
between airport and center of the city become more and more convenient and
efficient, traveling by air cost much less time than other transportations.
Businessman could travel and do business among different cities without any
delay. Therefore, more and more people prefer travelling by air to save time
and use time more efficient. As Boeing and Airbus reports, the airline traffic
RPKs will grow around 5% yearly in future 20 years. (Airbus 2014b; Boeing
2012) Therefore, to catch up with this growth, more and more aircrafts will
be produced and operated by airliners. More aircrafts and airline traffic could
help the world economy increase quickly, but it will also cause a huge
greenhouse gas pollution.
Aircrafts emissions are more serious than other transport because the
emissions will directly release into high altitude atmosphere. Emissions at
high altitude will cause much more damage to the atmosphere than ground
ones (Scelsi et al. 2010). Therefore, it is quite important to reduce the aircraft
emissions to make the development of aviation reach the sustainability. On
the other hand, as shows in Airbus’s report, the fuel price increase nearly 4
times in the past 10 years (Airbus 2014b). Thus, to make the airlines
operating economical, the aircrafts should be reduced of using jet fuel. Since
most of the aircraft emission comes from the engine burns fuel, the direct
approach to reduce the aircraft emissions and fuel cost is designing more
efficient and less emission engines. However, as the engine is one of the most
complex system of aircrafts, designing more efficient engine need huge
money and time. Thus, another direct way to reduce the emissions is reduce
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the aircrafts weight. The aircrafts could burn less fuel to produce less power
with a lighter bodies. Also, using lighter materials, the aircrafts could be
designed larger and carry more passengers without increasing the propulsion.
1.2 Aim
The aim of the report is to point out the innovative metallic composite
materials using currently and analysis these materials in detail to find out
their advantages and challenges.
2.0 Material applications
The aluminum alloy is widely used in aircraft structure because it costs less to
produce, has high strength to support the aircraft structure and lighter than other
metals. However, as the development of aircraft technology, aluminum alloy
cannot meet people’s requirement of lighter aircrafts. At the same time, the fuel
prize increase multiply in recent decades. A most important issue to affect the
usage of fuel is the weight of the aircraft (Campbell 2006d). In addition, people
need more large aircrafts (such as A380) to meet the requirement of increasingly
busy airlines. Thus, people began to search for new materials which could take
place of aluminum alloy. Therefore, metallic composite materials which are first
been used in military after Second World War (Sinmazçelik et al. 2011), was
invented into civil aviation. The following chapter will point out these new
designed metallic composite materials and detailed analysis these applications.
2.1 Fibre metal laminates (FMLs)
FMLs are hybrid composite structures based on thin sheets of metal alloys
and plies of fibre reinforced polymeric materials (Cortés & Cantwell 2006).
Because fibre reinforced polymeric materials are lighter than aluminum
alloys, inserting fibre reinforced polymeric materials between aluminum
alloy sheets could help to reduce the weight of aluminum alloy much without
reducing its strength. The Figure 1 shows the FMLs classifications and the
most commonly applications are ARALL and GLARE. In 1978, the first
generation ARALL was introduced and CARALL was developed from
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ARALL later. (Reyes Villanueva & Cantwell 2004) However, because the
CARALL shows poor fatigue performance during the test, it has not been
used. In 1990, another material developed from ARALL, GLARE was
introduced and became another main FMLs quickly. (Asundi & Choi 1997)
The following chapters will detailed claim these FMLs.
Figure 1: Classification of FMLs
Source: (Sinmazçelik et al. 2011)
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2.1.1 Aramid Reinforced Aluminum Laminate (ARALL)
Figure 2: Schematic presentation of ARALL 2
Source: (Sinmazçelik et al. 2011)
The ARALL laminates use high strength aramid fibres embedded into
aluminium sheets to increase the material’s strength and reduce its weigh
at the same time (see Figure 2). Thus, using ARALL laminates could
help the aircraft reduce its weight. The aramid fibre is insensitive to the
loading just as Figure 3 shows, which gives the ARALL an advanced
ability on crack-grow protection. That means, the ARALL structure
could bear more load for longer time when crack occur. It makes the
aircraft safer on protecting fracture. At the same time, this ability makes
the ARALL has a longer life cycle comparing with aluminium alloys.
Therefore, the maintenance costs of ARALL will be lower than
aluminium alloys. Furthermore, the ARALL laminates also carries the
advantages of aluminium alloys, such as low cost and easy to produce.
(Sinmazçelik et al. 2011) Since the ARALL could protect fatigue better
than aluminium alloy, it is mainly used for fatigue dominated parts of
the aircraft, such as low wing skin, the pressurized fuselage cabin and
cargo doors.
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Figure 3: Crack bridging mechanism of ARALL laminates
Source: (Sinmazçelik et al. 2011)
However, the ARALL laminates are weak in bending, buckling,
compression loading and transverse tension. Therefore, the using area
of ARALL is quite limited and it cannot use in the area where will
suffer complex loading. At the same time, the ARALL can only form
strong bonds with aluminium which limits the research area for
developing better FMLs based on aramid fibre. Furthermore, the
aramid fibre is easily to absorb moisture which makes the inner-
aluminium get corrosion easily. The corrosion inside materials are quite
hard to find out. Thus, ARALL laminates need high-tech equipment to
check for corrosion and the corrosion risk is higher than alumunium
alloys. (Sinmazçelik et al. 2011)
2.1.2 Glass Reinforced Aluminum Laminate (GRALE)
The structure difference between ARALL and GRALE is that ARALE
laminates use glass fibre instead of aramid fibre. The density of GRALE
laminate is at least 8% lighter than aluminium alloy (Wu & Yang 2005),
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but it is higher than aramid fibre (Sinmazçelik et al. 2011). Thus, using
GLARE laminates cannot significant reduce the aircraft weigh as
ARALL laminates do. However, comparing with ARALL, glass fibre
has a better adhesion which could make the FMLs structure stronger.
Additional, the GLARE does not absorb moisture which makes it have
a good ability on protecting inner-corrosion. (Sinmazçelik et al. 2011)
On the other hand, because of the structure character of glass fibre, the
GLARE laminates has higher longitudinal strength but lower strength in
transverse direction for both tensile and compressive behavior.
Therefore, as Figure 4 shows, two glass fibre sheets will be put cross-
plied (such as 90° and 0° or +45° and -45°) to make sure the GRALE
laminates could have a higher strength in either directions. However, the
yield strength of GLARE laminates is still lower than aluminium alloy.
(Wu & Yang 2005)
Figure 4: Schematic illustration of a cross-ply GLARE laminates
Source: (Sinmazçelik et al. 2011)
From Figure 5 it could be seen that the GLARE laminates also have an
advanced ability on fracture protection when crack occurs than
aluminium alloys. It also makes the GLARE has good crack protection,
as Figure 6 shows. The GLARE crack-growth rates are 10-100 times
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slower than aluminium alloys. Furthermore, From Figure 7, it could be
seen that GLARE has a quite higher impact behavior comparing with
other materials. (Wu & Yang 2005) However, the GLARE laminates
have low stiffness which makes it cannot defense elastic deformation
with very high loading. (Sinmazçelik et al. 2011)
Figure 5: The fracture behavior of GLARE laminates
Source: (Wu & Yang 2005)
Figure 6: The fatigue behavior of GLARE
Source: (Wu & Yang 2005)
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2.1.3 Carbon fiber aluminum laminates (CARALL)
As the ARALL laminates have poor compressive strength, CARALL
which is developed base on ARALL was introduced. The CARALL uses
carbon fibre replace the aramid fibre (see Figure 8) which gives the new
materials higher specific modulus, but relatively low values of specific
strength, strain to failure and impact resistance.
Figure 8: schematic illustration of CARALL laminates
Source: (Sinmazçelik et al. 2011)
2.1.4 Advantages of using FMLs
Based the analysis before, it could be seen that FMLs are advanced
materials that could be used to replace aluminium alloys in some area of
the aircraft. An obvious benefit of using FMLs is that it could help to
reduce the weight of aircraft 20% - 50% (MRAZOVA 2013). The Boeing
787 Dreamliner, half of which use composite materials, is 10,000 lbs
lighter and burns 20% less fuel than a comparably-sized all-aluminium
aircraft (Massengill 2005). It is well know that less fuel burning means
less emission and less damage to environment. In addition, some
materials such as glass fibre, are not limited by the width of aluminium
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alloys. Thus, these materials allow tailor-made skin of any size which
could help the aircraft become more streamlined and more suit for
aerodynamic. (ADVANCED GLASSFIBER YARNS LLC 2006) It
could also help to reduce the burning of fuel and emissions. Furthermore,
the FMLs could protect the inner-electrical-corrosion well by insert
insulating layer between aluminium sheets. The aircraft will be more
reliable and the corrosion protection maintenance work load could be
reduced. (MRAZOVA 2013) Moreover, the FMLs also have the ability
to reduce the crack-grow rates. The crack-grow rates reduction and
inner-electrical-corrosion, could help to extend the aircraft structure life-
circle much. A longer life-circle lead to less materials consumption and
maintenance work. The pollution for producing materials and the
pollution during maintenance which are also important pollution sources
of aviation industry could be reduced.
2.1.5 Challenges of FMLs
As FMLs are new high-tech materials, it still has many challenges which
need to solve by material improvements. The FMLs may have non-
visible impact damage which cannot be found out during visible A or B
check, just as Figure 9 shows in left side. It will increase the maintenance
work because these kinds of damage need high-tech equipment (such as
X-ray tomography, Laser shearography and infrared imaging) to find out.
(ATSB 2007) Additional, the reparations for FMLs will be different than
other metal structure. That means the engineerings need more training
and higher knowledge. (MRAZOVA 2013) On the other hand, the
nonrecurring cost for producing some of FMLs, such as GLARE, is
higher than aluminium alloys (Campbell 2006c). It will make the cost of
aircraft increase as well.
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Figure 9: Delamination and disbonding in composite laminates
Source: (Werfelman 2007)
Furthermore, from the Figure 10, it could be seen that the GLARE are
much less environment friendly than Al 2024. That is because the Al
2024 is produced by 100% recycle aluminium and recycle aluminium
need much less energy. Even the recycle aluminium are not allowed to
be used on new aircrafts, with the cooperation, the manufacturing
technology for GLARE still has a large space to develop. (Scelsi et al.
2010) At the same time, from the Figure 10, it could be seen that the
introduction of Carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP) is also a
challenge for FMLs. The CFPR is even lighter and more strength than
FMLs and it has less impact during manufacturing. Therefore, FMLs
still has many weakness need improvement to make it more widely used
and produce less environment impact.
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Figure 10: Single score impact results for manufacturing and disposal of Al 2024,
CFRP and GLARE panels
Source: (Scelsi et al. 2010)
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2.2 Sandwich structure
The sandwich structure was found from the nature environment and it was
first be described by W. Fairbairn in 1849 for the Britannia Tubular Bridge
in North Wales (Herrmann, Zahlen & Zuardy 2005). It could be seen quite
easily in the wild, such as the branches of the trees and the bones of animals.
The sandwich could make the whole structure more weight effectiveness.
Therefore, using sandwich structure on the aircraft could also reduce the
aircrafts weight much. From Figure 11, it could be seen that the sandwich
structure could be separated depending the different core inside. The
honeycomb cores (such as tails, flaps, spoilers and carbon floor panel) and
foam cores are the sandwich structures that current aircrafts mainly used.
Depending different materials used for the cores, the sandwich structure
could have much different characters and could be used in different
conditions. (Herrmann, Zahlen & Zuardy 2005)
Figure 11: Different sandwich core types
Source: (Herrmann, Zahlen & Zuardy 2005)
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2.2.1 Bonded repair of composite sandwich structures
Based on the structure character of sandwich cores, the composite
sandwich structures could bonded repair by only replacing the failure
part. The Figure 12 shows the basic method of bonded reparation. It
could be seen that the reparation work cost long time because the surface
need to be polished and repaired piles by piles. In addition, after
complete the fixing, the repaired place needs to be dried and have an
intensity test. Therefore, repairing the sandwich structure is a complex
work and need to spend a long time. For further detail reparation, please
see (FAA 2004).
Figure 12: Schematic of a scarf repair applied to a sandwich component
Source: (FAA 2004)
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2.2.2 Advantages of using sandwich structure
Similar with FMLs, sandwich structure also weight effectiveness which
makes the aircraft weight reduction become easier. Also, based on the
structure characters of sandwich cores, the sandwich structure is
continuous stiffness distribution. Thus, the sandwich structure does not
need complex cross-overs of stiffening elements, such as frames and
stringers, to support large surface. At the same time, complex frames
free also means that the surface of the structure could be smooth without
setting many rivets to fasten the frames as shows in Figure 13. In
addition, without complex structures, the production processes could
also become simple. (Herrmann, Zahlen & Zuardy 2005) Furthermore,
the Sandwich Structures have an excellent damping behavior and good
energy absorption (Majamäki 2002). Therefore, using sandwich
structure to make fuselage shells could reduce the cabin noise and give
passengers a better condition.
Figure 13: Aircraft wing
Moreover, with different core materials, the sandwich structure could get
different advantages. For example, using materials that are self-
extinguishable and nontoxic, the sandwich structure will have good
ability on protecting fire and smoke which could increase the survival
rate in accidents. Also, the core with low water absorption could help the
aircraft from increasing weight by absorbing water. Additional, non-
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corrosive cores could help the sandwich structure to protect corrosion
significantly. Furthermore, as shows in last chapter, the cracks and
slamming damage could be repaired by partly replaced instead of replace
the whole structure. It makes the maintenance cost reduce much. (DIAB
Knowledge Series) Additional, the structure life cycle could also be
extended which could help to reduce the pollution for manufacturing and
the usage rate of unrenewable material.
2.2.3 Challenges of sandwich structure
The sandwich structure could get many benefits from different cores, but
it will also increase the complexity of the sandwich structure. Using
sandwich structure with different cores means more knowledge should
be learnt for engineers, and it will also make the sandwich structure
maintenance work more complex. In addition, similar with FMLs, the
sandwich structure also hardly to find out structural failures inside the
core. At the same time, although the sandwich structure could be
repaired partly, the reparation work are quite complex for novice and
cost long time to finish. (Herrmann, Zahlen & Zuardy 2005)
Furthermore, the sandwich structure has a good resistance for crack and
corrosion, but it is more sensitive to other types of damages. The damage
could cause disbonding, delamination, and internal crushing. (FAA 2004)
Thus, the sandwich structure still need complete failure check system to
make sure it work well. Therefore, to make the sandwich structure
become the primary structure of aircrafts, there are still many researches
need to be done to improve it.
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3.0 Case study
Nowadays, the high-tech metallic composite materials have already been used on
the modern aircrafts. In this section, a detail model (A380) will be used to fully
analysis the high-tech metallic composite materials applied in current aviation
industry and how the light weight composite materials affect the aviation industry.
3.1 Model description
A380 is the largest commercial aircraft in the world. Its typical operating
empty weight is around 25 tons and it could carry more than 500 passengers.
(Airbus 2014a) Besides the more powerful engine and aerodynamic structure
design, using lighter materials to reduce the total weight of the aircraft is one
of the main reason that this large metal could fly into sky. The A380 is 15
tons lighter than it would be if made entirely of metal (Airbus).
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3.2 Application analysis
The Figure 14 shows the different sandwich applications on A380. The
common character of these parts is that these parts stress load is simple and
comes from single direction. For example, the cabin floor panel is used
mainly support the load comes from the passengers weight, and the flaps are
mainly used for suffer the pressure comes from high speed air at the downside
surface. These sandwich applications help to reduce the weight of A380
effectively.
Figure 14: sandwich applications on A380
Source: (Herrmann, Zahlen & Zuardy 2005)
In the figure 15, the vertical tail plane (VTP) of A380 is separated into 5
major structural
Assemblies:
1. Leading edge fairings (including tip and dorsal fin)
2. Center box structure (including the interface to the fuselage)
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3. Trailing edge fairings
4. Rudder
5. Fin – fuselage fairing
For the leading edge fairings, because the antennas are installed behind the
leading edge, the leading edge need to allow for electromagnetic
transmission. Therefore, this part is made by NOMEX® honeycomb and
GLARE which are good at transmit electromagnetic. (Herrmann, Zahlen &
Zuardy 2005)
Figure 15: VTP major structural assemblies
source: (Herrmann, Zahlen & Zuardy 2005)
The Figure 16 shows part of the fuselage of A380 which is made by GLARE.
The A380 has about 380 m2 GLARE fuselage which helps the A380 reduce
about 794 kg of weight (Wu & Yang 2005). It could be seen that with GLARE,
the aircraft fuselage block could be built quite large. As all know, the
reliability and strength would be much high for a complete structure than an
assembly structure. At the same time, the Figure 17 claims the benefits the
A380 gets from using GLARE instead of aluinium alloys. It could be seen
that the GLARE fuselage is more reliable than aluminium alloys. At the same
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time, because the glass fibre inside GLARE is good at fire protection, using
GLARE to build the fuselage could help the aircraft protect the fire outside
and save the passengers. (Fokker Technologies)
Figure 16: Over 30 sq. metres of fuselage for the Airbus A380, including stringers
Source: (Fokker Technologies)
Figure 17: GLARE VS. ALUMINIUM Comparison Ratio
Source: (Fokker Technologies)
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All of these new high-tech composite materials make the A380 could
strength its huge body and could be powered by its four engines with a lighter
weight. However, comparing with other two engines aircrafts, four engine
will produce double emission. Thus, the A380 still need to continually reduce
its weight so that the A380 could have three, even two engines to power.
4.0 Benefits and challenges of light weight metallic composite
materials
4.1 Benefits
Making aircraft lighter has many benefits. A FAA Advanced Materials
Research Program report claims that every pound of aircraft weight reduction
could save US$100-300 over the aircraft’s service life. (ATSB 2007) Lighter
aircraft lead to the reduction of propulsion to support the aircraft to fly. The
engine power could also be reduced which could lead to less emission and
less noise produced by engine. At the same time, on the premise of keeping
engine power, the aircraft could be designed larger with light materials. It
means the aircraft could carry more passengers in one time, and the flight
frequency could be reduced which could help to reduce the emission and
noise per passenger. The aircraft will become more efficient.
Moreover, the new high-tech metallic composite materials allows tailor-
made skins of any size. Thus, with these new materials, the aircraft could be
designed more suitable for aerodynamic. The resistance could be reduced
which could also help to reduce the engine power and the emission. At the
same time, the noise produce by air-friction could also be reduced. Moreover,
less propulsion also means less fuel burning. Thus, the usage rate of
unrenewable jet fuel could be reduced to meet the sustainability. Furthermore,
the higher weight efficient materials could support the next generation
aircraft’s design. The new materials could build a new aircraft body which is
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totally different from current aircrafts as Figure 18 shows. This new aircraft
could carry much more passengers than current aircrafts and will significant
reduce the aircraft emission per passenger.
Figure 18: Cross section of future BWB ‘Clean Era’
Source: (Fokker Technologies)
In the life-long maintenance, the new lightweight materials also show
advantages comparing with aluminium alloys. Because the new materials
have good resistance for corrosion, crack and fatigue, the materials life time
will be much longer than aluminium alloys. That means the number of new
materials production which are used for replaced failure ones could be
reduced. Therefore, the pollution for producing new materials could also be
reduced. In addition, less failure materials could also reduce the maintenance
costs and pollutions. Therefore, during the whole service life of the aircrafts
with new materials, their total costs and pollutions will be much lower than
all-aluminium aircrafts. Moreover, long-life materials could also help to
reduce the usage rate of unrenewable metals to meet the sustainability.
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4.2 Challenges
Besides of the benefits, there are still many challenges for the new
lightweight metallic composite materials. The firstly challenge is the training.
The introduction of new materials means a large number of new training
programs. No matter the design, manufactory and maintenance are also need
to be trained to make sure the aircrafts’ mechanical properties with new
materials are under control. These program will cost much money and take
long time. On the other hand, the metallic composite materials have many
new properties comparing with aluminium alloys, such as non-visible failure.
Thus, these new materials need new high-tech equipment to support the
maintenance. This will also cost much money for the new equipment.
Furthermore, even the newest high-tech Boeing 787 Dreamliner only use 50%
of composite materials by weight to replace aluminium alloys (ATSB 2007).
That is because the composite materials still has many weakness and
limitations which makes them cannot be widely used as aluminium alloys do.
Therefore, further research still need to be done to improve the widely
adaptive of the composite materials. Another challenge for using composite
materials is that the manufacturing cost is much higher than aluminium alloys.
That means more composite materials are used, higher the aircraft prize will
be. Higher prize will cost higher investment risk. Moreover, even the life
cycle for lightweight composite materials is much longer which reduce the
usage rate of unrenewable metals, the manufacturing of lightweight
composite materials will cost more fossil fuels and renewable materials
comparing with aluminium alloys. (Beck et al. 2008) From the figure 19, it
could be seen that the GLARE need a long time after manufacturing to
display its advance with aluminium alloys. Therefore, the manufacturing
processes also need to improve to make it more suitable for sustainability.
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Figure 19: Schematic of “Break-even” in terms of fuel use for aluminium, GLARE
and carbon-fibre epoxy resin composite
Source: (Beck et al. 2008)
5.0 Conclusion
Depending the analysis before, it could be seen that the metallic composite
materials play an important role on reducing aircrafts’ weight and increase the
aircraft structure strength. With the high weight-strength efficient composite
materials, the aircraft could be designed more open. Many new design method
could come true, such as blended wing body aircraft. At the same time, light
weight composite materials could help to reduce much weight of aircraft which
gives many benefits to the environment and make the aviation industry meet the
sustainability. However, there are still many challenges for metallic composite
materials which block it be widely used on the whole aircraft. The challenges
both comes from the internal (such as structure limitation and complex structure)
and external (such as the competition from the recycle aluminium alloys and
cabon-fibre materials). Therefore, the metallic composite materials still have
much research need to be done.
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6.0 Recommendations
Fully training engineers
As the metallic composite materials have much more complex structure and
need higher level maintenance equipment, the maintenance engineers also
need to have advanced knowledge, so that they could find out failure timely.
At the same time, because the composite materials may have non-visible
failure which need to use high-tech equipment to check, the engineers also
need have enough knowledge to use the equipment and know how to assess
the result comes out from these equipment. Furthermore, different with
aluminium alloys, some composite material could use bonded repair instead
of structure replace. Therefore, the engineers need to grasp the bonded repair
skill so that they could finish the maintenance work without any delay.
Further mezzanine metals and cores research
Currently, most common used mezzanine are fibre, glass fibre and carbon
fibre. All of those mezzanines have some limitation which makes them
cannot widely applied on whole aircraft. Therefore, further research still need
to be done to find out whether there are some other mezzanines that are even
better than the current ones. For the sandwich structure, because it has the
advantages that the Properties could be different with different cores, new
innovate core could be found to replace the aluminium alloys structure that
currently used. It could make the aircraft even lighter with more aluminium
alloys replaced by sandwich structure. Therefore, the aircraft could be design
even lighter and more sustainable.
Manufacturing processes development
As claimed in the report above, producing metallic composite materials will
cost more nonrenewable materials and cause more pollutions. Although the
environment benefits of composite materials could be seen in a long period,
the start environment impact could be reduced to make the composite
materials much more environment friendly than aluminium alloys. People
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will more prefer to accept new materials that the benefits could be seen in a
short period. Therefore, it could indirectly promote the application of
composite materials on aircrafts. At the same time, the producing cost also
need to be reduced to reduce the total cost of aircraft so that the investment
risk could reduce as well to attract more airliners use newly lightweight
aircrafts. The whole aviation industry will meet the sustainability easily.
Develop the bonded repair processes
As shown before, the bonded reparation could help to save the usage of
materials and reduce the maintenance cost, but the reparation processes are
to complex and cost long time and need complex test after maintenance work.
These maintenance work is too complex for natives and much easy to make
mistakes. Therefore, the reparation process and the maintenance equipment
need to be improved to make the maintenance work more simple and efficient.
Additional, the improvement could help to increase the composite reliability.
Develop the failure check equipment
Because the composite materials are more likely to have non-visible failure
than aluminium alloys, the composite materials need to be taken care more
carefully. However, without large equipment, it is quite hard to find out non-
visible failure during A or B check. Thus, if the composite materials get
inner-failure between C and D check, it would be a serious hazard for the
aircraft. Therefore, the small equipment that could be carried by human to
check inner-failure for some failure frequency area during A check or daily
check, could help to increase the aircraft safety.
29
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