Vertiflite May/June 2021

withautomatedfiberplacement thermoplastics for fuselage- or wing-size parts, you don’t have to apply pressure.” The materials engineer said, “That part of the industry is not mature yet… We’re not there yet, but it’s coming.” Howell said, “Thermoplastics may make air taxis more crashworthy and damage resistant. “Thermoplastics fail much differently than thermosets. It’s graceful failure. The fibers are still going to work, but the matrix has a lot more strain-to-failure. Instead of the pieces falling apart, the polymers still hold together. It’s not as catastrophic, but it’s still going to fail. It’s going to help because it’s higher strain to failure in the matrix material.”

Primary Structure Intermediate modulus fiber and prepregs are excellent for booms, wings or spars where stiffness is needed to reduce bending & buckling

Blades Toray out-of-autoclave prepregs are used in blade applications requiring high fatigue life

Fuselage Structure Slit tapes are optimized for automated fiber placement to increase layup production speed

Clips, Brackets, Access Doors Snap cure resins can create net shape parts with minimal post processing

Thermoplastic and thermoset composites have broad application in different parts of AAM vehicles. (Toray Advanced Composites)

About the Author Senior contributing editor Frank Colucci has written for Vertiflite for the past 20+ years on a range of subjects, including rotorcraft design, civil and military operations, testing, advanced materials, and systems integration. He can be reached at rotorfrank@aol.com .

Jaunt’s Peryea noted that, “All the non-destructive inspection processes apply to thermoplastics.” He said, “We are really designing to commercial aviation design practices, for which the frequency of inspection is reduced compared to the design practices currently used in the rotorcraft industry.”

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