Advances in metal Additive Manufacturing (AM) have increased its potential for use in the manufacture of components for commercial aircraft. Through both increased design freedom and substantial weight savings, metal AM is considered capable of transforming the aerospace industry. Yet, variability in the mechanical properties of the printed metals (from a single machine and across […]
ULTEM 9085 is a high strength thermoplastic that is certified by the Federal Aviation Administration (FFA) for additive manufactured (AM) parts. This qualification was conducted by the National Institute for Aviation Research (NIAR) and analyzed by the National Center for Advanced Materials Performance (NCAMP). The qualification data includes mechanical properties such as tensile and flexural […]
The overarching goals of the proposed study are a) to characterize, in-situ, the main failure mechanisms occurring in thermoset and thermoplastic Discontinuous Fiber Composites (DFCs), b) to develop a physically-based modeling approach that will ultimately lead to a certification process for DFC materials and structures based primarily on analysis, supported by relatively modest experimental verification, […]
This preliminary research was directed toward further understanding the fundamental science of matrix-adhesive interactions of adhesively bonded composite aircraft structure throughout the product’s lifecycle. Nanoindentation techniques were used to characterize various regions of adhesively bonded carbon fiber epoxy samples including the matrix resin, adhesive, and bondline mixing zones (interface/interphase). For this study, adhesive bonded structure […]