Fiber metal laminates: An advanced material for future aircraft

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Abstract

Fiber Metal Laminates (FML) consist of thin, high strength aluminium alloy sheets alternately bonded to plies of fiber-reinforced epoxy adhesive. They provide an ideal combination of metals and composites that results in a material, which combines the best features of organic matrix composites and metals, without sharing their individual disadvantages. FML offer substantial weight savings relative to current metallic structures. Further, the number of parts required to build a component may be dramatically less than the number of parts needed to construct the same component of metal alloy. This can lead to labour savings, sometimes offsetting the higher price of the present materials. These features, together with superior fatigue behaviour, damage tolerant properties, inherent resistance to corrosion, good fire resistance for safety improvement, make FML very attractive candidate materials for future aircraft structures [1–3]. Later a new concept apply on this hybrid material: Fiber-Metal Laminates with Splice or Spliced Laminates. The development of spliced laminates has been a logical step after the identification of the favorable behavior of FML. Spliced laminates may provide a good solution obtaining substantially increased dimensions of spliced products. The splicing concept offers the same benefit (20 – 50% weight savings) as for a regular FML panel, but for much wider panels (>4 meters). This increased width capability can result in a significant reduction in manufacturing cost. These attributes make spliced laminates promising candidates for fuselage and lower wing materials for the next generation of Very Large Civil Transport (VLCT) aircraft and the Ultra High Capacity Aircraft (UHCA) for 600 to 800 passengers [4].

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