Airplane Parts Research Articles

Metal Replacement in Aeronautics Applications Using Two‐Dimensional Multifunctional Composites

Carbon‐based composites have replaced metals in many structural components of modern airplanes; however, functional applications still require metal conductors and devices. Here, the production and integration in small‐scale airplane parts of electric devices based on metal‐free layered composites of graphene, boron nitride, and polymers are described. Thanks to their two‐dimensional structure, these materials feature excellent tunable thermoelectrical properties and high flexibility. We describe the production and performance of heaters and ice sensors installed on scaled NACA‐0012 airfoils to avoid ice formation, to remove ice or to detect the ice on the outer skin of the airfoil. We demonstrate that we can tune the electrical conductivity of the composite heating element from 105 to 103 S m−1 that is preserved even after 1000 bending cycles. The heaters successfully achieve anti‐icing and deicing in representative icing conditions and can sustain high‐power densities as required for electrothermal ice‐protection systems in aviation. The composite material can be readapted into a sensor able to detect ice formation in real time in an icing wind tunnel. Moreover, the possibility to use the heaters developed as heating molds to cure composite materials by out‐of‐oven curing, with a significant energy saving potential, is demonstrated.

NASA licenses 3D-printable superalloy

GRX-810 is a 3D-printable high-temperature material that will lead to stronger, more durable airplane and spacecraft parts.

Airplane Parts and Covid Masks: Labour Commuters of North-Western Romania Between Central and Eastern European “Re-Industrialisation” and the Global Market

Abstract This article aims to uncover two main features of ‘re-industrialisation’ in Central and Eastern Europe: the reconfiguration of the economic geography in Northwest Romania and the multiple ways in which the Romanian working class is being integrated into the new economy. Post-socialist shifts towards a low-skilled, flexible, and generally insecure economy have underlined the need for cheap, easily disposable labour, and the emergence of the new economic geography has changed the accumulation of capital in the region and the patterns of labour mobility. Despite massive migration, many have continued to work in the region or have combined migration periods with work close to home. This study explores the different mobilities individuals engage in and seeks to understand why some workers choose to stay and live in the region and how the available opportunities for workers aiming to stay in the region influence their prospects. This study traces the patterns of labour commuting and how this is structured by individuals’ strategies and motivations, as well as the social relationships that support this work. The article analyses labour commuting to two major industrial hubs in the region: one which manufactures aerospace components, and one that produces medical textiles. Both companies are foreign-owned and concentrate a significant proportion of the region’s workforce. The micro-dynamics revealed will contribute to understanding the patterns of work in the specific form of re-industrialisation in contemporary Romania.

Issues in Designing of Mechanical Parts Models in CAD Programs

Abstract The article describes methods of creating mechanical parts in 3D programs, together with presenting very significant issues that emerge during the designing process employed in this creation, the main goal being to show the most important factors playing a role in the design process. Resultantly, it is ascertained that the most important factors needing to be considered by a designer are, inter alia, mass of the parts, strength, and kind of material. The article indicates the different types of parts used in different load cases, the objective being to explain various aspects relevant to design. The parts were different in particular in their nature of work and purpose. The article also presents illustrations after finite element method (FEM) analysis. It was important and interesting to observe how the stress in the tested parts was distributed under load and how the structure changed when the used material changed. The stress had a very large influence for the design of every airplane part; a case in point would be the illustration available from the lever example. The main role of this article is to describe different designing factors that could help a specialist create new designs in the future.

Optimization of the Stirring Parameters of AZ91Mg-Based Stir Casted Hybrid Composites Using Taguchi and ANN

In the current research, the fabricated Mg hybrid composites amalgamate with the vacuum-based squeezed stir casting process having TiC and Al2O3 reinforcement’s in which AZ91Mg-alloy is the base material. The study includes the processing parameters of the vacuum-based squeezed stir casting method (such as stirring time, stirrer depth, and stirring speed) that have been varied and then investigates their influential effect by using the L16 orthogonal Taguchi approach. By considering these parameters, the tribo-mechanical properties are also optimized like porosity, ultimate strength, and rate of wear loss of Mg-hybrid composites. The result reveals a significant association between processing parameters and optimized tribo-mechanical properties. The results signify that the processing parameters are best optimized at processing parameters of 500 rpm of stirring speed, 5 min of stirring time, and 50 mm of stirrer depth and the optimized tribo-mechanical properties are 0.4% porosity, 245 MPa of ultimate strength, and 0.0011 mm3 per min is the loss of wear rate. However, the ANOVA results contribute that the stirrer depth has the most significant processing parameter compared to other optimized parameters. This research also includes an artificially designed networking model which validates the designated set of empirical data. Thus due to their suitability for abrasion wear AZ91-hybrid composite gives a new divergence towards the designing parts of minuscule airplanes used in surveillance applications such as ailerons and wing flaps.

Innovative Method of Embedding Optical Fiber inside Titanium Alloy Utilizing Friction Stir Forming

The development of FBG (Fiber Bragg Grating) sensors is essential for intelligent parts of airplanes to achieve ultra-lightweight structures and intelligent aviation control. Awaiting solution is embedding technology of optical fiber sensors into the base material of the parts; however, it has been challenging to embed fibers into high melting temperature point alloys like titanium-based materials without having any defects. Present research fulfills the mentioned demands effectively by utilizing Friction Stir Forming (FSF). Precisely, optical fiber has been placed into a guide slit inside the titanium sheet. Then, FSF was applied to the surface of the titanium. As a result, titanium plasticizes and flows into the guide slit. This mechanically interlocks the optical fiber inside the titanium alloy. This solid-state stirring process can bury sensors inside the titanium to protect the sensor from harsh environments. Embedded sensors will detect the strain and temperature of the host titanium in real-time. Moreover, this research can have further considerable effects on the areas like aerospace and artificial intelligence systems that demand real-time condition monitoring systems.

Aerodynamic and Structural Aspects of a Distributed Propulsion System for Commuter Airplane

In this paper, an aerodynamic and structural computation framework was produced to develop a more efficient aircraft configuration considering a wing with a distributed electric propulsion and its use in different flight missions. For that reason, a model of a regional airplane was used as a case study. The considered model was a nine-seat light airplane with a cruise speed of 500 km/h at an altitude 9000 m. The design of the distributed system is introduced, then the aerodynamic and structural aspects of the new wing with distributed electric propulsion system are calculated, and finally flight performances are calculated for the purpose of analysis of the DEP effect. The design of the DEP system aimed at meeting the required landing conditions and the masses of its components, such as the electric motors, the control units and the power source of the DEP system were estimated. Aerodynamic calculations included computations of different wing aspect ratios. These calculations take into account the drag of the existing airplane parts such as fuselage and tail surfaces. A modified lifting-line theory was used as a computational tool for the preliminary study. It was used to calculate the wing drag in cruise regime and to determine the distribution of aerodynamic forces and moments. Next, based on aerodynamic calculations and flight envelope, the basic skeletal parts of the wing were designed and the weight of the wing was calculated. Finally, fuel consumption calculations for different wing sizes were made and compared with the original design. The results show that a wing with a 35% reduction in area can reduce fuel consumption by more than 6% while keeping the same overall weight of the aircraft.

Increased self-reported sensitivity to environmental stimuli and its effects on perception of air quality and well-being.

In previous studies, negative associations were found between increased environmental sensitivity and general well-being as well as positive perception of air quality. However, only a few studies with partly inconsistent results examined this relation under exposure. They tried to determine whether people with increased environmental sensitivity react to real environmental conditions with changes in current well-being and perception of air quality. Pooled data from two single-blinded randomized controlled trials with different exposure levels were analyzed. Participants were exposed to different levels of volatile organic compounds (VOC) and carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the front part of a former in-service wide-body airplane inserted in a low-pressure chamber. Three exposure groups were created depending on the VOC/CO₂ levels: low, medium and high. Subjects repeatedly answered questions about their current mental well-being and about perception of air quality and odor intensity. Based on self-reported data the participants were classified into groups with low and higher environmental sensitivity. Data were evaluated using a 2 (environmental sensitivity) x 3 (exposure) ANCOVA with repeated measures. 503 individuals (221 females) participated (mean age: 42.8±14.5 years). Thereof, 166 individuals were assigned to the group with higher environmental sensitivity; they reported poorer psychological well-being regarding vitality (F (1,466)=16.42, p<.001***, partial η²=0.034) and vigilance (F (1,467)=7.82, p=.005**, partial η²=0.016) and rated the pleasantness of air quality (F (1,476)=7.55, p=.006**, partial η²=0.016) and air movement (F (1,474)=5.11, p=.024*, partial η²=0.011) worse than people in the low sensitivity group. Exposure levels showed no effects. No systematic differences between men and women were found. Increased environmental sensitivity shared common variance with negative affectivity, another person-related variable. Its explanatory power was higher for evaluations of the environment whereas no differences between the concepts in explaining current psychological well-being were found. Even a slightly elevated level of environmental sensitivity led to worse ratings of the environment with no clear relation to the real environment. Consequently, environmental sensitivity should be considered as a confounding factor in environmental exposure studies. The independency from real exposure levels is in line with the results from previous studies showing that the differences in environmental ratings are probably also driven by psychological factors.

Research on the method of negative acceleration flight test based on simulation

Negative acceleration flight test is an important part of civil airplane to obtain airworthiness certification. According to civil aviation regulations, engine, APU, fuel, power supply and other systems need to be verified by flight test. In this paper, the factors affecting negative acceleration flight are evaluated by simulation method, such as gross weight (GW), center of gravity (CG), pitch attitude, calibrated airspeed, and stick travel. Relationship between flight path angle (FPA) rate and the calibrated airspeed is formed by approximate calculation. The duration of each negative acceleration flight is suggested to be a minimum of 7 seconds. In order to maximize the time to maintain the negative overload state, a more effective flight test method is proposed.

Implementation of the MgO/epoxy nanocomposites as flame retardant

This work aims to prepare magnesium oxide MgO nanopowder using the coprecipitation method and prepare nanocomposites by mixing MgO prepared nanopowder with epoxy resin by weight percentages (0.5, 1, 1.5, 2, and 2.5) using hand lay up molding. These prepared chemical materials are added to many consumer products to meet fire safety codes and prevent these items from catching fire quickly. If the flame retarded material or an adjacent material has ignited, the flame retardant will slow down combustion and often prevent the fire from spreading to other items. Especially some of these chemicals can accumulate in parts of electrical equipment, cars, airplanes, and building components. Using non toxic nanofillers in polymers to achieve flame retardancy is a viable option. The prepared powder has a cubic structure, space group, and 4.2165 Å unit cell parameters according to X-ray diffraction XRD data and using Dicvol 91 indexing program. The grain size of the prepared powder was measured using Sherrer's equation to be 12.45 nm. The scanning electron microscope SEM micrograph of MgO nanopowder showed a spherical shape. The effect of MgO on flame retardancy of epoxy resin was investigated using limiting oxygen index LOI, rate of burning RB, and maximum flame height HF tests. According to the results of the three standard tests, the best flame retardancy with a strong and well intumescent char is obtained from the sample with 2 wt. % of MgO nanopowder, which has the highest LOI value of 21.95, RB value of 1.65 cm/min, and HF value of 5.44 cm. This data of using MgO nanopowder as flame retardant was valuable and necessary because it showed MgO nanopowder help prevent and slow fires of epoxy resin, therefore, protecting property and saving lives.

Technical and Legal Relations in Aviation Industry from Technology Management and Sustainability Perspective

Technical and legal relations in the production concern certain actions and interactions in a company. Knowledge in this area is essential for proper risk management. In this paper, the relations occurring in the production of aircraft parts responsible for flight safety, taking into account the construction and technological requirements as well as legal aspects were analyzed. The results of the performed analysis were used in building of a system of legal relations in the production of airplane parts. Moreover, problems concerning compliance with legal regulations were analyzed. It has been shown, among others, that it is impossible to eliminate the human factor from the production process. This results in the necessity to carry out awareness, ethical and professional training of the personnel involved in the entire production chain, from the preparation of process documentation to the final product inspection. The study is interdisciplinary in nature, combining the analysis of structural, technological, organizational, and legal issues related to the production of critical aerospace parts.

児童・生徒を対象にしたものづくり教育

An open lecture was held at the Tokyo Metropolitan College of Industrial Technology for 4th grade elementary school students and above and junior high school students to learn English while making things. In this lecture, students first learned about the mechanism of flying objects and further deepened their knowledge by actually experiencing flying objects. Next, the students made rubber-powered airplanes using teaching materials written in both Japanese and English. They also learned the English names of airplane parts, English expressions used in the manufacturing process, and English grammar. After the public class, a questionnaire was conducted among the students and children who took part in the course. As a result, from the efforts of this open lecture, it was confirmed that the teaching materials created in this open lecture were easy to understand for students and children.

Continuous Tow Steering Around an Elliptical Cutout in a Composite Panel

Cutouts are widely used to accommodate windows, openings for access purposes, or fasteners in the primary structural parts of airplanes. The presence of cutouts in composite panels results in stress or strain concentrations, leading to potentially reduced load-carrying capacity. Steering tows around cutouts using emerging techniques in three-dimensional (3-D) printing and advanced fiber placement can potentially alleviate such problems. Continuous tow steering around cutouts also eliminates fiber cutting, thereby precluding ply-level 3-D stress concentration, which could otherwise lead to delamination-induced damage. This work examines stress and strain concentrations, using continuous tow steering, around a representative wingbox access hole. Buckling response under compression loading together with stress and strain concentrations under both tensile and compression loads are examined. A steered configuration shows a 26% improvement in buckling performance in comparison with the equivalent straight-fiber configuration. Under tensile loading, the maximum stress and strain concentration factors around the cutout are 29 and 32% larger, respectively, for straight-fiber orientations than those with steered tows around the cutout. For the compression loading condition, the direct strain of the panel with straight-fiber orientations was found to be three times that of steered-fiber trajectories in the vicinity of the cutout.

Machine Learning-Based Detection Technique for NDT in Industrial Manufacturing

Fluorescent penetrant inspection (FPI) is a well-assessed non-destructive test method used in manufacturing for detecting cracks and other flaws of the product under test. This is a critical phase in the mechanical and aerospace industrial sector. The purpose of this work was to present the implementation of an automated inspection system, developing a vision-based expert system to automate the inspection phase of the FPI process in an aerospace manufacturing line. The aim of this process was to identify the defectiveness status of some mechanical parts by the means of images. This paper will present, test and compare different machine learning architectures to perform the automated defect detection on a given dataset. For each test sample, several images at different angles were captured to properly populate the input dataset. In this way, the defectiveness status should be found combining the information contained in all the pictures. In particular, the system was designed for increasing the reliability of the evaluations performed on the airplane part, by implementing proper artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to reduce current human operators’ effort. The results show that, for applications in which the dataset available is quite small, a well-designed feature extraction process before the machine learning classifier is a very important step for achieving high classification accuracy.

Airplane designing using Quadratic Trigonometric B-spline with shape parameters

<abstract> The B-spline curves have been grasped tremendous achievements inside the widely identified field of Computer Aided Geometric Design (CAGD). In CAGD, spline functions have been used for the designing of various objects. In this paper, new Quadratic Trigonometric B-spline (QTBS) functions with two shape parameters are introduced. The proposed QTBS functions inherit the basic properties of classical B-spline and have been proved in this paper. The proposed scheme associated with two shape parameters where the classical B-spline functions do not have. The QTBS has been used for designing of different parts of airplane like winglet, airfoil, turbo-machinery blades and vertical stabilizer. The designed part can be controlled or changed using free parameters. The effect of shape parameters is also expressed. </abstract>

Density-Invariant Registration of Multiple Scans for Aircraft Measurement

In the aviation industry, the demand for high accuracy airplane product is growing, which makes precise production of airplane parts and accurate manufacturing increasingly important. To this end, it is crucial to be able to accurately measure the whole surface of an aircraft. 3-D laser scanner is widely utilized to capture the local shapes, represented as 3-D point clouds, of an object from different viewpoints. Multiview registration of point clouds is therefore a critical step to obtain the whole shape of an object. In this article, we propose a global registration framework to simultaneously align multiple point clouds with target detection and hierarchical optimization for aircraft inspection. By placing some targets (i.e., markers) surrounding an aircraft, we first scan the aircraft by putting a laser scanner around the aircraft at various stations, resulting in a number of laser scans which contain the point clouds of aircraft parts as well as targets. By detecting the centers of targets automatically, all partial point clouds are initially aligned to the global coordinate system. Furthermore, we tackle the influence of nonuniform distribution of point cloud density on registration accuracy, which has not been extensively studied so far, due to the large size of the aircraft. Existing approaches cannot directly apply to large size point clouds’ registration due to the aforementioned challenge. To address this issue, we propose a density-invariant area-based method to measure the overlapped region. On this basis, a hierarchical optimization registration method is used to achieve multiview registration of aircraft point clouds, and thereby the entire geometry shape of the aircraft is accurately obtained. A variety of experiments on real raw data demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of our proposed framework.

Evaluating the Efficiency of Six-DoF Haptic Rendering-Based Virtual Assembly Training.

Haptics plays an important role in training users to assemble mechanical components, such as airplane or car parts. Because mechanical components are often geometrically complex, efficient collision detection and six-DoF haptic rendering of contact are required for virtual assembly, and this has been extensively explored in prior work. However, as this article shows, this alone is not sufficient for efficient virtual assembly training. This article asks how to augment six-DoF haptic rendering of contact to maximize virtual assembly training efficiency, and proposes and measures several visual and haptic guidance strategies. Our visual strategies consist of displaying animations of the correct assembly path, motion indicator cues, and close-ups on difficult assembly path sections. Our haptic guidance consists of forces and torques that correct the trainee's deviation from the path. We investigate several haptic guidance strategies, including continuous forces and torques, force/torque nudging and anti-forces/torques. We designed a user study to evaluate the training efficiency of our proposed strategies quantitatively, using ANOVA and Tukey statistics. Our main finding is that the most efficient training approach is to use haptic rendering of contact in combination with visual animation-based guidance. Continuous forces, nudging, anti-forces and motion indicator cues were measured to be less effective.

Bioplastics: requirement for sustainability

The petrochemical-based plastics are causing a strong challenge for the natural ecosystem leading to global environmental pollution due to their non-biodegradable nature. Hence, the requirement of alternative materials possessing environmental advantages received attention and leads to the development of bioplastics. Definition of bioplastics is not universal but broadly it can be defined as biodegradable plastic derived from biodegradable substances. Although, all types of bioplastics are not biodegradable, still their many advantages towards the environment cannot be ruled out and hence, their applications in varied areas have increased many-folds world-wide. Bioplastics are being used in rigid and flexible packaging materials, food and drinks containers, dining utensils, electronic devices, automotive and airplane parts, cable sheaths and casings, noise and thermal insulation panels and many more. The list is growing up. Bioplastics have shown their potential for a sustainable society and presents some advantages such as lower carbon footprint, energy efficiency, and eco-safety. This article discusses the basic information, sources, biodegradability, and applications of bioplastics.

Restoring the Fatigue Life of Surface-Hardened Airplane Parts by Repeated Shot Hardening

The restoration of the fatigue life of high-strength airplane parts by repeated shot peening in conditions of multicyclic fatigue is explained.

Numerical investigation on the effect of wall thickness on quasistatic crushing properties of nylon honeycomb structure

Honeycomb structures are extensively used energy-absorbing structures in the airplane, spacecraft and automobile body parts. The critical parameters that influence the aggregate energy absorption are cell size, wall thickness and node length. However, wall thickness is a crucial determining factor for crushing and buckling. The type of failure manifested to the crushing of the cells can be predicted with unit cell buckling. The current work investigated on quasistatic crushing properties of honeycomb structure by varying unit cell wall thickness and at constant cell size of 10 mm. The out of plane quasistatic compression test of nylon honeycomb core of various wall thicknesses i.e 1, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4 and 1.5 mm is carried out using ANSYS 14 simulation. The results obtained from the test are in close agreement with unit cell buckling analysis for predicting the mode of failure. The ultimate compressive strength of 1.5 mm cell is observed to be 1.4 folds higher than that of 1 mm cell. The energy absorption obtained from load-displacement graph during compression test indicates the proportional relationship between wall thickness and energy absorption. High energy absorption ability for 1.5 mm wall thickness core infers superior crushing strength enables to use as energy-absorbing devices, where lightweight and strength are the prime concern.