We appreciate the properties that make certain kinds of composites ideal for aerospace manufacturing. Many of our customers rely on us to help them design and build modern aircraft featuring the latest composites. Yet we know the job isn’t always easy. Designing aircraft with composites in mind has its challenges.
From passenger aircraft to cargo planes and the military’s most powerful air defenses, composites play an incredibly important role in both design and manufacturing. They offer an excellent strength-to-weight ratio along with durability and toughness. So what’s not to love about aerospace composites?
In a perfect world, aerospace design would always go off without a hitch. Designers and engineers would come up with the perfect plans on the first draft of each new piece of equipment. Manufacturing would begin and that would be that. Unfortunately, the world is not perfect.
In the design phase alone, working with composite presents some very specific challenges. They include:
Our hats are off to the engineers and designers who overcome all the challenges involved with working with composites. No doubt that aircraft design was a lot easier when the primary building material was metal.
The challenges do not end once plans are completed and finalized. Implementing those plans through manufacturing opens the door to an entirely new set of challenges. The first is tooling and process complexity.
The tooling and process necessary to turn composite materials into usable components can be quite complex. It tends to be more costly as well. Keeping costs in check is an important part of the equation.
Other manufacturing challenges include:
The challenges inherent to manufacturing with composite materials explain why aerospace manufacturing is so costly. But it’s better for manufacturers to spend the money to do things right than cut corners and take chances.
Finally, completed aircraft need to be maintained. They need to be repaired from time to time. Unfortunately, composite materials create special challenges where maintenance and repairs are concerned. Just one example is the reality that defects in composite materials are harder to identify during routine inspections. Yet inspectors cannot afford to get it wrong.
Composite repairs are often more complex, just like testing. They require a level of expertise that not many engineers possess. And of course, maintenance and repairs also need to account for long-term performance projections.
We could go on to discuss cost and certification challenges and other complexities related to aerospace design and manufacturing. Here is the point: none of them is easy. But that’s why manufacturers depend on partners like Aerodine. We pitch in and help aerospace manufacturers face their challenges head on. It is what we do.
