A critical review of recent advances in the aerospace materials

Abstract

The pursuit for improved performance in the aerospace and aviation industries has inspired the development, investigation, and research of advanced materials. Since the last few years, a lot of research on different alloys, composites and some other advanced materials has been performed to perfectly meet the needs of the aerospace field such as basic frames of aircraft, fuselages, engine parts, wings etc. Various aluminium, magnesium, titanium, and nickel-based alloys have been developed with certain advantages like strength-to-weight ratio, corrosion resistance, wear resistance etc. However, there are major challenges to aerospace materials such as insufficient mechanical and chemical properties, overall weight of aircraft, fretting wear, stress corrosion cracking, incapability at high temperatures, and low oxidation resistance. Therefore, vast studies have been conducted for the development of next-generation aerospace materials. In the present article, attention has been made to study the contemporary materials, current research going on and future trends on advanced materials in the field of aerospace engineering. Aluminium-based alloys are found as the most widely used metal alloys in the aerospace sector for their strong mechanical properties. However, polymer matrix composites and metal matrix composites have gained popularity due to their exceptional strength and stiffness. Titanium-based alloys are favoured for their strength and corrosion resistance, leading to increased adoption.