The Canadian CSeries CS100 commercial aircraft uses aluminum-lithium, not carbon-fiber composites, in its fuselage to save weight.
Photo courtesy of Bombardier Aerospace
Follow-up from last night's comment: After I mentioned the American Airlines flight that crashed in 1979 after a design flaw left it vulnerable to maintenance damage, I tried to remember where I had once read about that accident. Here's the answer: Our distinguished columnist, Henry Petroski, wrote about it in his book, "To Engineer Is Human."
While repairs require more effort, composites would seem to be more damage resistant than an aluminum structure.
I looked for a video I'd seen several years ago: Boeing demonstrating a large skin section held vertically, and airline executives offered the chance to whack it with a sledge hammer.
I cannot find that video so this one will have to do:
Bombardier may go for traditional repair techniques on the areas in danger of ground support damage, but if composites shrug off the damage that would ding aluminum, then composites would seem to be the better bet.
TJ, your points are well taken. The biggest problem of all in composite repair, though, compared to metal repair, is the lack of knowledge to identify damage in the first place, since it's much more difficult to detect. The next biggest problem is figuring out how to repair so many different materials with so many different uses and so many different possible procedures. And, by extension, lack of knowledge there, as well.
Gigabit and PoE are two networking technologies moving ahead in tandem as industrial users power remote Ethernet devices such as IP security cameras at 1,000 Mbps over existing CAT5 cable.
New disc magnet motors fit into the design trend of stepping up to closed loop performance while maintaining the cost advantage of stepper motor technology.
At the Design News webinar on June 27, learn all about aluminum extrusion: designing the right shape so it costs the least, is simplest to manufacture, and best fits the application's structural requirements.
A new battery design, which replaces lithium with abundant and low-cost elemental sulfur, is still in its nascent stages but shows real promise for giving batteries more energy potential.
From Dell / Intel® New Paradigms in Design Work Scott Hamilton, vertical market strategist for Dell Precision workstations, 5/2/2013 5
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For industrial control applications, or even a simple assembly line, that machine can go almost 24/7 without a break. But what happens when the task is a little more complex? That’s where the “smart” machine would come in. The smart machine is one that has some simple (or complex in some cases) processing capability to be able to adapt to changing conditions. Such machines are suited for a host of applications, including automotive, aerospace, defense, medical, computers and electronics, telecommunications, consumer goods, and so on. This radio show will show what’s possible with smart machines, and what tradeoffs need to be made to implement such a solution.
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