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Self-Healing System Applied to Aviation

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the if-you-prick-us-do-we-not-bleed dept.

ScienceDaily is reporting that the self-healing materials are being used in some new aircraft designs. We covered several self-healing systems in the past months, but it is nice to see it starting to find practical applications. "This simple but ingenious technique, similar to the bruising and bleeding/healing processes we see after we cut ourselves, has been developed by aerospace engineers at Bristol University, with funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). It has potential to be applied wherever fibre-reinforced polymer (FRP) composites are used. These lightweight, high-performance materials are proving increasingly popular not only in aircraft but also in car, wind turbine and even spacecraft manufacture. The new self-repair system could therefore have an impact in all these fields."

2 of 76 comments (clear)

  1. Re:So... by SBacks · · Score: 5, Informative

    Unfortunately, this wouldn't have much of an impact on macro-scale damage. Its much more useful for those tiny microscopic cracks that can grow and lead to a failure. Much like when you slice your finger as opposed to cutting the entire hand off.

  2. Quite clever, actually. by Starker_Kull · · Score: 5, Interesting
    My first worry upon reading the idea would be that some dim bulb would propose that we need to reduce the number of heavy tear-down inspections to look for fatigue damage, since they 'self-repair'. But the article proposes using not only a resin that flows out to repair broken fibers, but putting dye in the resin so that fatigue cracks (and the subsequent self-repair) are much more obvious to inspectors.... To quote the article:

    "This approach can deal with small-scale damage that's not obvious to the naked eye but which might lead to serious failures in structural integrity if it escapes attention," says Dr Ian Bond, who has led the project. "It's intended to complement rather than replace conventional inspection and maintenance routines, which can readily pick up larger-scale damage, caused by a bird strike, for example."
    Nice idea... I hope we see it deployed in production aircraft someday.