Re: Gluing aluminum



Ed Huntress wrote:

"David Billington" <djb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:46FFAC22.4010402@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


Ed Huntress wrote:

"Jman" <mooglieman@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:1191158765.159816.160540@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

I think I'd rather take the train or bus thanks.......


http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2003612251_boeing111.html

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3618/is_199709/ai_n8765992/pg_4


I wrote articles almost identical to those 25 years ago. IIRC, the L-1011 had a carbon-fiber tailfin, as well. And the other story is the same old, same old for the high-performance composites business. Very little appears to have changed.

A lot of people don't realize how much epoxy is used throughout the structure of an airliner. They probably don't want to know. d8-)

However, they also don't know how much fatigue becomes a problem in all-aluminum aircraft that were designed over the last few decades. DC3's are still flying because the engineers didn't know what a reasonable safety margin was. Now they know, and the life of those planes is finite.

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Ed Huntress

I was told by late father, who was in the aerospace industry in the UK and later US as a stress analyst, maybe 25 years ago that one of the reasons the DC3 kept flying because you could still get fuselages and wings. When the life of the wings was up you bought new ones and the same with the fuselage. I expect like many planes the airframe life is also re-evaluated after actual service conditions have been experienced and extended or otherwise revised.


I think that's true, but I flew in DC3's in Canada's Northwest Territories that still had fabric-covered control surfaces. Those were *old* DC3's, and it was only 20 years ago that I flew in them.

If fabric covered what was the structure of the control surfaces made of?. I don't know much about wood structures so don't know if they suffer from fatigue.



They just stood up a lot longer. They also had severely reduced load capacities because of the overbuilding.

In the science museum in London there is a section of a 747 fuselage. It's quite surprising how thin the outer shell is, looks to be about 2.5mm from memory. Not that I have a problem with that as with a background in engineering I know some damn good people design these things and the 747 is a strong aircraft judging from the bits that has fallen off them and they still kept flying.


And there is replacement in newer aircraft that extends their lives. Still, everything is built closer to the limits in newer planes.

--
Ed Huntress



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