A review of plastics for use in the aircraft industry

Abstract

1. Introduction Plastics are becoming increasingly important in the Aircraft industry today. The types of plastic materials available are numerous and it is in order to select those of interest of British manufacture and to collect together their typical properties that this review has been undertaken. The properties of these materials make them suitable for such applications as radomes, wing tips, flooring, window frames, air ducting, airscrew spinners, drop tanks, experimental compressor rotor and stator blades made from glass polyester laminates; drop tanks, guided missile wings, experimental wings etc. made from asbestos phenolic laminates; jigs and tools of glass polyester, paper and cloth phenolic laminates; goers and bearings from the parer and cloth reinforced phenolics as well as from nylon and polytetrafluoroothylene; winds, canopies etc. from polymethyl methacrylate; sandwich structures using plastic foamed cores; adhesive for many types of bonding. The value of reinforced plastics lies not only in the properties of the materials, but also in the fabrication methods available. In general only relatively low pressures are necessary, and in some cases pressure is not needed at all. Large and quite complex components can be moulded in one piece without resource to the more expensive dies and equipment needed for equivalent metal parts. These methods enable prototypes and small quantities to be produced economically and at the o other extreme lend themsel7es to quantity production. It is not intended that this review should be comprehensive, and no reference has been made to the electrical properties of the materials selected. It is very difficult to give data that is accurate in all cases, as the strength of these materials will depend on the manufacturing techniques employed ... [cont.].