Overview
In the pursuit of weight reduction, future structures will have to be multifunctional in the sense that a single structure fulfils various objectives and therefore it is not necessary to develop independent structures for each of the functions required by the aircraft (acoustic and vibration attenuation, mechanical properties, electrical conductivity, etc.). Therefore multifunctional laminates need to be developed and compared with current structural solutions to quantify the improvement. Within the scope of this proposal, the main goals that were combined into a multifunctional laminate were: acoustics, erosion, lightning protection (and electrical conductivity) and impact damage tolerance. Moreover, the mechanical properties of the proposed solutions will have to be evaluated to ensure that they are similar (and do not suffer a considerable reduction) with respect to the properties of the baseline configuration of the laminate before the multifunctional elements are added to it.
Once an optimum set of possible multifunctional laminate concepts had been developed and its properties tested, the research must ensure that the performance is kept when the size of the part is scaled up to full scale for the future industrial application.
Funding
Results
Executive Summary:
COMPASS Project, with full title “Functional Laminates Development. Components compatibility and feasibility assessment. Industrialization.” is a FP7 project of 27 months, which began on October 2010, the 8th and ended on January 2013, the 8th. The project was related to the CfP of Clean Sky: SP1-JTI-CS-2010-01. It had been developed in the frame of the Green Regional Aircraft programme and its activity code is: JTI-CS-2010-1-GRA-01-031. COMPASS consortium was composed of 2 partners: FIDAMC as coordinator and INTA. Both Research Institutes are located in Spain.
In the pursuit of weight reduction, future structures will have to be multifunctional in the sense that a single component fulfils various objectives and was not necessary to develop independent structures for each of the functions required by the aircraft (acoustic and vibration attenuation, mechanical properties, electrical conductivity, etc.). Therefore multifunctional materials need to be developed and compared with current structural solutions to quantify the improvement offered by these new hybrid configurations over traditional composite architectures.
Within the scope of this project, the main goal that should be combined into a multifunctional laminate was acoustics and vibration isolation capabilities. In this frame, multifunctional CFRP laminates with insertion of vibro-acoustic damping materials had been investigated in COMPASS project. Mechanical properties of the proposed solutions had also evaluated to ensure that they are similar (and do not suffer a considerable reduction) with respect to the properties of the baseline configuration of the laminate before the multifunctional elements are added to it. Moreover, other characteristics like erosion, lightning protection (and electrical conductivity) and moisture ingress had been assessed to check the laminate behaviour compared with traditional composite laminates. Once an optimum set of possible multifunctional laminate concepts had been developed and its properties tested, the research ensured that the performance is kept when the size of the part is scaled up to full scale for the future industrial application.
The main role of FIDAMC in this project was the selection of several materials and different manufacturing techniques with the aim of minimising noise and vibration propagation. INTA was in charge of the acoustic and vibrational evaluation while erosion assessment, moisture ingress, lightning strike and mechanical testing had been performed by FIDAMC. Finally, various demonstrators of the full scale components were built to study manufacturability issues and properties on the real size part. In parallel with this last stage of the project, an industrialisation strategy had been proposed.