SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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.
previous stories:
Irkut Shows New MC-21 Airliner
The Little Gear That Could Reshape the Jet Engine
(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.