Improving the aircraft safety by advanced structures and protecting nanofillers

Abstract

Inspection and Maintenance are important aspects when considering the availability of aircraft for revenue flights. Modern airframe design is exploiting new exciting developments in materials and structures to construct ever more efficient air vehicle able to enable efficient maintenance. The improvement in the aircraft safety by advanced structures and protecting nanofillers is a revolutionary approach that should lead to the creation of novel generation of multifunctional aircraft materials with strongly desired properties and design flexibilities. In recent years, the development of new nanostructured materials has enabled an evolving shift from single purpose materials to multifunctional systems that can provide greater value than the base materials alone; these materials possess attributes beyond the basic strength and stiffness that typically drive the science and engineering of the material for structural systems. Structural materials can be designed to have integrated electrical, electromagnetic, flame resistance, and possibly other functionalities that work in synergy to provide advantages that reach beyond that of the sum of the individual capabilities. Materials of this kind have tremendous potential to impact future structural performance by reducing size, weight, cost, power consumption and complexity while improving efficiency, safety and versatility. It is a well-known fact that, actually, also a very advanced design of an aircraft has to take required inspection intervals into account. An aircraft with inherent protective abilities could help to significantly extend the inspection intervals, thereby increasing aircraft availability. The challenge in this research is to develop and apply a multifunctional composite for structural applications. The aim of this project is the formulation, preparation and characterization of structural thermosetting composites containing dispersed protective nanofillers. This project specifically targets composites tailored for multifunctional applications such as lightning strike protection, and flame resistance. These composites were designed to enable their application on next generation aircrafts. With regard to the objectives of this PhD project the multifunctional composite systems were developed with the aim of overcoming the following drawbacks of the composite materials: • reduced electrical conductivity; • poor flame resistance. The thermosetting material was projected considering compatibility criteria so that to integrate different functions into a material that is capable of bearing mechanical loads and serves as a structural material element. [edited by author]