Laying the Groundwork for Aviation's Maintenance Demand - AIN Roundtable

[@charlesgraham5229]

I am just sharing my thoughts based on what I see everyday as a maintenance guy in the industry. There are plenty of current business jets that utilize composite materials throughout and most aircraft that have a few thousand hours or more will have had a composite repair at some point. Whether it be delaminating due to poor manufacturing, degradation from fuel or hydraulic leaks, impacts from weather, erosion from weather, or many other things. And good luck designing an airplane that is one consistent piece. There are hundreds of access panels required in current design that I don’t see going away any time soon. If you could design an airplane that utilizes this tech and found a company, I would suggest you do it. I would love to see new aircraft put into service. My original thought though was, yes composites are great but they are a pain to repair and the maintenance industry is lagging when it comes to the skilled techs that know how to do this work, and do it right.

[@DanFrederiksen]

Single piece shell composite fuselage means no fatigue or rust, it's also a much lighter construction, higher performing, less wear, smaller engines. Teslaesque clean simple cockpit also lightens and makes service simpler than a myriad of devices with cables. Simplifying construction throughout will reduce or eliminate maintenance and getting rid of the greed in engine production would mean you just slap a new engine on it for much less than current ridiculous refurb costs. Even a turbofan can really be a very simple device. Most of the difficulty in aviation is entirely self inflicted. And the GA fleet is a disgrace with people unironically flying 1945 planes. Imagine driving a 1945 car and not being perceived as a classic. That's what a Bonanza is. I did some napkin math, If you did the A320 body in 2mm carbon fiber it could hold 10bar pressure and it would weigh 1600kg. You could do the 2x1meter door as 14mm thick, weighing 10kg and it would be plenty strong enough to hold even sea level pressure in space. Take it up to FL500 or even higher and it will go through the air with ease. The potential for improvement, particularly in GA is staggering.

[@charlesgraham5229]

I think composites are great but just sticking with the theme of the video, you are going to really struggle to find maintenance professionals with the skillset, knowledge, and tooling to complete repairs on composite aircraft. As the industry moves towards composite implementation, you will have a demand that will feed into the supply of techs with these skills but as a maintenance guy on the floor each day, it will take a long time with the current investment in training to support the change. I really admire and appreciate the comment but man, composite repairs are difficult to get right and the current NDT capabilities really limit the ability of a facility to ensure airworthiness. I am hopeful we can move in the direction of implementing new tech into aviation but it's a slow industry to adapt to the changes. Cheers my friend.

[@DanFrederiksen]

@@charlesgraham5229 that's a common answer but why would there be repairs on a composite... it doesn't fatigue like alu, it's not fragile like alu, it doesn't rust. and if you crash it substantially, get a new airframe. the premise is that in normal operation for 30+ years it wouldn't need repair. several of the clips in this video are of metal planes opened up to inspect the condition of the metal. I assume that's just much less needed in a simple composite construction, especially for the fuselage if it's a single piece shell. Wings can also be quite simple in composite. If there is even the tiniest crack in aluminium that can be a cost nightmare. Granted the GA fleet is atrociously old but particularly the cessna on rebuild rescue has made it painfully obvious how garbage sheet and rivet alu planes are. It's a nightmare of shoddy complexity. I could build an aircraft manufacturing company with less effort than they have spent on that 'free' airplane. And even if you spent a million restoring it, it's still a garbage plane with worse fuel economy than an Eclipse twinjet.