FiberglassFiberglass (American English) or fibreglass (Commonwealth English) is a common type of fiber-reinforced plastic using glass fiber. The fibers may be randomly arranged, flattened into a sheet called a chopped strand mat, or woven into glass cloth. The plastic matrix may be a thermoset polymer matrix—most often based on thermosetting polymers such as epoxy, polyester resin, or vinyl ester resin—or a thermoplastic.
Composite materialA composite material (also called a composition material or shortened to composite, which is the common name) is a material which is produced from two or more constituent materials. These constituent materials have notably dissimilar chemical or physical properties and are merged to create a material with properties unlike the individual elements. Within the finished structure, the individual elements remain separate and distinct, distinguishing composites from mixtures and solid solutions.
Geometric modeling kernelA geometric modeling kernel is a solid modeling software component used in computer-aided design (CAD) packages. Available modelling kernels include: ACIS is developed and licensed by Spatial Corporation of Dassault Systèmes. SMLib is developed by Solid Modeling Solutions. Convergence Geometric Modeler is developed by Dassault Systèmes. Parasolid is developed and licensed by Siemens. Romulus was a predecessor to Parasolid. ShapeManager is developed by Autodesk and was forked from ACIS in 2001.
SolidWorksSolidWorks (stylized as SOLIDWORKS) is a solid modeling computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided engineering (CAE) application published by Dassault Systèmes. According to the publisher, over two million engineers and designers at more than 165,000 companies were using SolidWorks as of 2013. According to the company, fiscal year 2011–12 revenue for SolidWorks totaled $483 million. SolidWorks Corporation was founded in December 1993 by Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate Jon Hirschtick.
Environmental control systemIn aeronautics, an environmental control system (ECS) of an aircraft is an essential component which provides air supply, thermal control and cabin pressurization for the crew and passengers. Additional functions include the cooling of avionics, smoke detection, and fire suppression. The systems described below are specific to current production Boeing airliners, although the details are essentially identical for passenger jets from Airbus and other companies.
