Abstract

During the last years, the benefits of using carbon reinforced thermoplastic composite materials (CRTP) have been questioned and defended (higher fatigue resistance, greater toughness, better durability, reprocesability, recyclability and so on), they are considered as a future innovative technology allowing  highly integrated structures, impacting in weight reduction and reducing energetic costs by using out of autoclave processes. Therefore, (CRTP) could be considered as a future substitute of metallic materials and composite materials with thermoset matrices for aerospace applications, automotive and other industries.

Under the frame of the OUTCOME project (Clean Sky II), the design and analysis of the Upper Skin (upper coverage of a stiffened wing) for the militar aircraft C295 is developed, a medium tactical transport aircraft of ADS.

The selected material for the work is the unidirectional composite material APC2/AS4, supplied by Solvay, with PEEK as the thermoplastic matrix and carbon fibre as the reinforcement. Flat panels, detailed elementals and subelementals have been manufactured, all of them have been widely characterized attempting to obtain the required design allowables. 

Moreover, with the goal of cost reduction, productivity increases and environmental impact control, the manufacturing selected processes have been: a)  Hot-forming in oven and/or self heated toolings for stringers manufacturing and b) Automatic lamination in one step for the co-consolidation (full-integration) of the skin with the stringers.

The main goal of this review is showing the different steps in the manufacturing of a detailed element for a later structural test.