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The MS-21, a new single aisle airliner produced by Russia's United Aircraft Corporation, is the first passenger plane borne aloft by lightweight carbon-composite wings built without a costly pressurized oven called an autoclave.
[...] Under the new technology, instead of using fiber that is pre-impregnated with resin, parts are made from a dry-fiber engineered textile which is placed in a mould and then infused with resin under a vacuum.
The parts can then be cured in an oven without pressure, a process estimated to cost 25 percent more than metal. Ultimately, that gap needs to narrow significantly or disappear.
Boatbuilders and windfarm makers have used this method for years. Secondary airplane parts have also been made that way.
But although Canada's Bombardier partly used the technique for its CSeries, it was rare for flight-critical parts before the designers of the new Russian plane chose it for the wing.
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(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday May 31 2017, @05:55PM (2 children)
Please don't accuse me of looking at the article, but . . .
and
So how long does the fuel savings take to make up for the higher manufacture cost? How far into the aircraft's life?
Separate thought. Isn't aircraft life measured in 'cycles'? Would this material allow a larger number of cycles and thus a longer service life to recoup the higher manufacture cost?
Oh my. I don't know about cost, but aluminum takes a lot of energy to manufacture. So much so that it costs less to recycle and melt down aluminum rather than make more of it.
I'm assuming these composites would not be affected by gallium the same way that aluminum would be.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 31 2017, @06:12PM
Carbon fiber also takes a great deal of energy to make, but don't have a comparison with aluminum. One advantage to aluminum is ease and low cost of recycling; I have not seen any effective methods for reclaiming carbon fibers from an epoxy-carbon composite.
As far as resin-transfer molding vs autoclave molding, it's hard to see how the low pressure process could possibly produce composite parts with the same compaction as a pressure autoclave. Compaction, minimum resin and maximum carbon, is historically the goal for high quality and minimum weight composite parts. Weight is super important on airplanes, any small weight savings means less fuel required for the life of the aircraft, which can be huge.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2017, @10:11AM
So you mean it takes a lot of energy to smelt? It doesn't take much energy to manufacture.