Thermoplastic composites are accelerating their entry into the aerospace market

    The next two decades will be a very busy period for aircraft manufacturers, and thermoplastic composites are preparing to take full advantage of this opportunity. According to the 2020-2039 Commercial Market Outlook released by Boeing, by 2039, there will be 48,400 commercial aircraft flying globally, an increase of 22,500 from 2019. At the same time, airlines are speeding up the replacement cycle of old aircraft to improve the efficiency and sustainability of their fleet. Thermoplastic composites can help aerospace manufacturers meet this rapidly growing demand.

    Thermoplastics provide many advantages to the aerospace industry. Lightweight carbon fiber reinforced thermoplastic (CFRTP) parts have excellent strength and stiffness, corrosion resistance, chemical resistance, fatigue resistance, and durability. Their performance is usually better than equivalent metal parts.

    Thermoplastic composite structural parts are lighter than corresponding metal parts, allowing airlines to reduce fuel and carbon emissions. At the same time, thermoplastic composites are also a sustainable material. It is recyclable, so manufacturers can melt and reuse materials from production waste and scrapped parts.

    In the past ten years or so, the layout, integration, and part molding processes used for thermoplastics are almost similar to those of thermosets, such as the autoclave process, which can take several hours. With the development of materials and manufacturing, it is possible to speed up production, and by using automated equipment and non-autoclave processes, manufacturers can produce higher-quality thermoplastic composite structural parts at a faster rate, making them into aircraft A cost-effective option for production, so in recent years, designers have increasingly preferred to use thermoplastic composites.

    Material progress

    The consistency of materials is essential for rapid, large-scale production and automation, and the rapid development of thermoplastic unidirectional belts has gradually attracted attention in the industry and has led to changes in the materials used in the manufacture of thermoplastics.

    Aerospace designers mainly use continuous fiber thermoplastics to achieve the required strength and performance predictability of aircraft parts, but continuous fiber materials have some disadvantages when manufacturing complex parts. Generally, the molding speed of these parts is very fast, and it is a challenge to combine the fibers and plies in a very short time (usually a few seconds), but if the discontinuous fiber material is used, its performance is worrying.

    Now with a new option, the University of Delaware Composites Center recently developed a discontinuous fiber material in cooperation with NASA, which has properties comparable to continuous fiber thermoplastics. According to the center, using the materials it has developed, manufacturers can produce aerospace-quality parts at the same productivity as auto parts.

    The development of new resin systems has also gradually accelerated the molding process. Since the 1980s, manufacturers of thermoplastic composites have been adding resins from the polyaryletherketone (PAEK) family to their products. However, due to more demanding processing conditions (such as high temperatures), these high-performance polymers are difficult to use. A few years ago, Victrex introduced low melting point PAEK (LMPAEK?) to speed up production. Low melting point PAEK has similar mechanical strength, chemical resistance and other properties to other polymers in the family, but its melting point is about 40 degrees Celsius lower.

Reduce molding time

    Thermoplastic composites companies are using new equipment to reduce process steps and reduce production time. For example, continuous compression molding (CCM) enables manufacturers to produce laminates in large quantities in a very cost-effective manner.

    In order to achieve the low cost and high processing speed required for the production of larger parts and variable thickness parts, manufacturers need to use automated layup. Some companies are using pick and place robotic systems that can lay fabric forms (dry or prepreg) and increase or decrease the number of layers in certain areas. This allows manufacturers to more easily customize parts based on weight, stiffness and strength.

    Injection overmolding is used to reinforce parts of aircraft and add stiffeners or accessories to the parts. If continuous fibers are to be used, the geometry will be limited, and injection molding can provide more complex geometries. In mass production, this may be a very cost-effective way to create complex shapes.

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