Advanced Fibrous Composites for Aircraft Application

Abstract

Fibrous composite materials have been gaining immense interest in many applications such as construction, automotive, medicine, sports, aerospace, and aircraft industries. Their unique properties such as high strength-to-weight ratios in comparison with conventional materials such as metals and ceramics, make them suitable candidates for aircraft and construction applications. These structures exhibit good mechanical properties and high impact and fatigue resistance. Moreover, the ability to shape the structure and fabricating preforms for composite manufacturing allows the researchers to design and produce the specimens with different architectures and configurations. Different textile processes such as weaving, knitting, braiding, stitching, and nonwoven for the fabrication of preforms, and their performance and applications in composite structures are highlighted. This chapter focuses on the design and development of new fibrous composite structures for aircraft applications. Different types of advanced fibrous composite materials as well as their properties, advantages, and disadvantages for modern aircraft construction are discussed. Recent advances using fibrous composite structures on aircraft constructions are also presented. Fiber, matrix, and different fiber architectures and production methods are given. Finally, some directions for new developments and future work are outlined.