CompositesWorld

MAR 2018

CompositesWorld

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MARCH 2018 34 CompositesWorld By Ginger Gardiner / Senior Editor After more than 30 years of development, could in-situ consolidation finally fulfill its promise to eliminate fasteners and the autoclave, and enable an integrated, multifunctional airframe? » For more than six decades, composites have earned their way onto commercial aircraft, literally step by step. At each stage, they've proven themselves capable of forming increasingly flight- critical parts with the required strength, stiffness and near absence of flaws — surface porosity and unseen internal voids — that could be the source of future damage as aircraft age. Until compara- tively recently, that near void-free standard (<1% porosity) was maintained by a combination of vacuum bag consolidation and, typically, many hours of exposure to high heat and pressure in an autoclave during the curing process. In recent years, develop- ment of oven-curable resins (systems that can be consolidated to acceptable void contents without an autoclave) have helped to shorten cure cycles and, because ovens cost less to operate than autoclaves, to reduce both the time and expense required to produce parts. In parallel, automated filament winding, auto- mated tape laying (ATL) and automated fiber placement (AFP) equipment have replaced hand layup in many applications, radically increasing the speed at which parts can be laminated. Consolidating thermoplastic composite aerostructures in place, Part 1 Consolidating thermoplastic composite aerostructures in place, Part 1 Pioneers of in-situ consolidated structures Automated Dynamics developed the full-size, integrally stiffened, in-situ consoli- dated thermoplastic helicopter fuselage pictured at top in 2012, after many sub-scale demonstrators in the prior decade. Accudyne achieved autoclave-level properties in CF/PEEK cylinders, the largest (shown here) at 152 cm in diameter. Source (top) | Automated Dynamics Source (immediately above) | Accudyne Systems Inc.

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