Aerospace manufacturer | EPFL Graph Search

An aerospace manufacturer is a company or individual involved in the various aspects of designing, building, testing, selling, and maintaining aircraft, aircraft parts, missiles, rockets, or spacecraft. Aerospace is a high technology industry. The aircraft industry is the industry supporting aviation by building aircraft and manufacturing aircraft parts for their maintenance. This includes aircraft and parts used for civil aviation and military aviation. Most production is done pursuant to type certificates and Defense Standards issued by a government body. This term has been largely subsumed by the more encompassing term: "aerospace industry". Market In 2015 the aircraft production was worth US

180.3 Billion: 61% airliners, 14% business and general aviation, 12% Military aircraft, 10% military rotary wing and 3% civil rotary wing; while their MRO was worth

135.1 Bn or $ Bn combined. The global aerospace industry was worth $838 billion in 2017: Aircraft & Engine OEM

Effect of dislocations, Al-3(Sc,Zr) distribution and ageing temperature on theta ' precipitation in Al-Cu-(Sc)-(Zr) alloys

Baptiste Thomas Jean Rouxel

The 2xxx series aluminium alloys, which contain Cu as the main addition element, are widely used in the aerospace industry for their high specific strength. The main strengthening contribution in these alloys comes from the formation of theta' precipitates. Recent work, has revealed that minor additions of Sc and Zr result in significant strength increase through the formation of fine Al-3(Sc,Zr) dispersoids that help nucleate and refine the theta' precipitates. The aim of the present work is to understand the impact of dispersoids distribution, ageing temperature and stretching on theta' precipitation. In order to separate these different contributions, specific thermo-mechanical routes were conducted on an Al-3.5 wt.%Cu and an Al-3.5 wt.%Cu-0.1 wt.Sc-0.14 wt.Zr alloy. Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) and Atom Probe Tomography (APT) characterisations were conducted to study the nano-precipitation. While stretching has a significant impact on the theta' distribution in the Al-3.5 wt.%Cu alloy, it has a reduced impact in the Al-3.5 wt.%Cu-0.1 wt.%Sc-0.14 wt.%Zr alloy. In the latter alloy, the theta' precipitates are already refined, even without stretching, due to preferential heterogeneous nucleation on the finely dispersed Al-3(Sc,Zr) phase. This nucleation mechanism was found to dominate when ageing at 160 degrees C. When increasing the ageing temperature to 190 degrees C, theta' increasingly nucleates homogeneously and less on the dispersoids. Ageing at a higher temperature allows for a redistribution of Sc at the theta' interface hence increasing its thermal stability. This competition in nucleation mechanisms is revealed for the first time and provides different strategies to design high strength 2xxx-series alloys with purpose-specific properties.

ELSEVIER SCI LTD2020

Economic and environmental assessment of alternative production methods for composite aircraft components

Fabrice Gaille, Jan-Anders Månson, Véronique Michaud, Rémy Teuscher, Robert Andrew Witik

The use of carbon fibre reinforced plastics is steadily increasing in the aerospace industry as rising fuel costs and concerns over the environment push airframe manufacturers to improve aircraft efficiency. The high costs associated with manufacturing carbon fibre reinforced components in autoclaves have prompted interest in alternative out-of-autoclave processing methods. In this study a combined cost modelling and life-cycle assessment approach is applied to selected out-of-autoclave production scenarios. Out-of-autoclave specific "prepregs" and resin infused fabrics are cured in thermal and microwave ovens of comparable volume and assessed against a benchmark autoclave scenario. Results showed that materials, in particular carbon fibres, contributed most significantly to component cost and environmental impacts. Resin infusion processes were effective at reducing costs, as reinforcement fabrics and resin were less expensive. Due to the small contribution of energy to total cost, reductions in energy use did not lead to significant savings, although they did improve the environmental performance of the manufacturing process. Out-of-autoclave specific prepregs did not perform as well due to their higher costs, longer associated cycle times and the need for lengthy de-bulking operations. Microwave oven curing offered little in terms of cost reduction and environmental improvement as investment costs were comparable to those of an autoclave, and energy consumption was relatively high compared with traditional thermal oven use. Opportunities for improvement exist if investment costs can be reduced and additional work carried out to promote more efficient transfer of energy. Improvement of the carbon fibre production process would be the most effective approach for reducing impacts and costs from carbon fibre components. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Elsevier2012

Towards Ontology-Based Modeling of Technical Documentation and Operation Data of the Engineering Asset

Andreas Koukias, Drazen Nadoveza

Management of engineering assets within an organization is a crucial interdisciplinary approach that aims to optimize their performance and guarantee their overall effectiveness through efficient decision making. This task is always largely supported by official technical documentation created by the asset manufacturer which describes in detail the asset's functionality, architecture as well all necessary information such as testing, operation and maintenance specifications. This valuable information has to be accessible and comprehensive since it essentially dictates the target asset configuration, operation and maintenance modes and strategies in order to guarantee the asset's performance and availability. However, current technical documentations mainly consist of textual and graphical documents that often are poorly written and constructed, misleading, unavailable, outdated and are read by users with as little effort as possible. This results in a poor connection of the operating asset with its original documentation that prevents the asset from reaching its full potential. In this work, we will propose the new concept of using ontologies as a form of documentation that accompanies the official technical documentation and is created by the manufacturer and provided to the customer. We will also propose the use of a generic asset management ontology model that asset users can be based on to create their own domain asset ontology. Finally, we will demonstrate with examples how the use of the ontology and its reasoning mechanism is ideal to identify potential problems in the operation, configuration and maintenance of the asset, as well as potentially discover areas for improvement. We expect that eventually this concept will gather all the knowledge necessary to assist in the decision making process in order to improve the asset's availability, longevity and quality of operations.