Several well-known European companies initiated by ESTIA-Compositadour are joining forces to develop advanced composite manufacturing solutions for full-scale thermoplastic aircraft rear-end demonstrators.
The fuselage of a new generation of large passenger aircraft will certainly rely on the advantages of thermoplastic composite materials. Higher resilience, recyclable potential and faster production cycles enable us to meet the challenges of the aviation industry in the future.
In fact, such materials are increasingly used in the aerospace industry because they help reduce aircraft weight, thereby reducing fuel consumption. There are still some problems that need to be overcome before this goal can be achieved. For aircraft with complex forms of continuous fiber reinforcement, the manufacturing of the rear end still poses huge challenges: such as high processing temperatures, high raw material costs, complex temperature control tools and constantly changing cross-sections.
In order to support the "Clean Sky 2" program, which focuses on developing concepts and realizing the best rear fuselage and tail technology, ESTIA-Compositadour jointly initiated a European enterprise alliance and developed it into a 2.5-year applied research project Frame: Used for the manufacture of reinforced, complex, double-curved structure fiber reinforced thermoplastic composite material.
The main goal of the framework is to validate and evaluate the manufacturing method of the overall thermoplastic backend with key design features. The key technology developed in-house will be used in the medium-sized advanced back-end demonstrator manufactured by DLR, which is part of the large passenger aircraft technology platform.
By combining their expertise and strength, the alliance hopes to bring reliable and competitive industrial solutions to intelligent heating systems for automatic web laying, efficient rib production processes and advanced heating tools.