(SM1) 19-1

Aeronautical Composite Structure Cost Reduction from the Material Aspect

Jacques Cinquin EADS CCR. 12 Rue Pasteur, BP 76, 92152 Suresnes Cedex, France

The introduction of composite materials on Aeronautical structures to replace metallic structures was driven at the beginning by the performance and the weight reduction. Todays composite structural parts mainly made from carbon fibre and epoxy resins take a non negligible share of the aerospace structural parts. (about 25% in weight for civil Aircraft application and sometimes up to 50% for military aircraft or helicopter). Due to the pressure on the price of the final product, the future of the composite structure will be a reality if the final cost of the structural composite parts are not too much higher compare to the price of a metallic structure. Various directions for composite structure cost reduction are possible : the process, the material cost, the part design with function integration, the quality insurance, the maintenance, the material qualification, the part certification This paper will present some first results from the material aspect and how the cost could be reduced by using less expensive materials or materials designed for less expensive process. A comparison of the obtained properties between these low cost materials and traditional ones will be done and a discussion on the adaptation of the material solution to the real needs and requirement will be presented taking in account the material standardisation, harmonisation of requirements and testing methods that could also help to reduce the cost.

1) INTRODUCTION
Few years ago, when engineers designed new aeronautical structural parts, the leitmotiv was the technical performance. Today, the final cost of aeronautical structural part could be considered as one of the driving parameters by the design offices when they define new parts. The difficulties with the military products is that the technical performance requirement is still at a high level with, in the same time, a high pressure to reduce the final cost. This final cost of a composite structural part is shared between the raw material cost, the manufacturing cost and the quality control cost. But all these costs are often linked with the part design and the technical requirement of the part. Depending on the process used, a first approximation for a carbon fibre epoxy resin composite part gives about 10% of the final cost for the quality control (NDT), 40% of the total cost for the material purchasing and 50% of the total cost for the manufacturing task.

2) COST REDUCTION FROM A MATERIAL ASPECT.

2.1) CARBON FIBRE. From a material aspect, at the beginning of the carbon composite industry, the price of the carbon prepreg was driven by the price of the carbon fibre. The price of the epoxy/amine matrices was very low compare to the price of the carbon fibres.

Paper presented at the RTO AVT Specialists Meeting on Low Cost Composite Structures, held in Loen, Norway, 7-11 May 2001, and published in RTO-MP-069(II).

(SM1) 19-2

Due to the development of the carbon fibre industry (1, 2), today the price of the carbon fibres could be under the price of the epoxy matrices used for high performance parts. The most important technical aspect that help to reduce the price of the carbon fibres is the increases of the number of mono-filament in the tow. The first example, after a first standardisation in years 1990, was the replacement of an equilibrated fabric made from 3K carbon fibres by an equilibrated fabric made from 6K carbon fibres. Then, the price of the fabric was cut down by a factor two due to the cost reduction of the carbon fibres, and the reduction of the time needed to manufacture the equivalent quantity of fabric. In the same time, 6K carbon fibre unidirectional tape were replaced by 12K carbon fibre unidirectional tape. In years 2000, a step forward was achieved with utilisation of 24K carbon fibre for unidirectional tape. All these evolutions where pushing in the way of a material cost reduction without compromise on the mechanical properties to introduce more composite in aeronautical structures. The introduction of the heavy tows up to 320K was done by ZOLTEC for industrial and sporting goods application during years 1990. All the main carbon fibre manufacturers did developments to propose heavy tows. A non exhaustive list is given table 1. Since few years Mitsubishi and Toray made developments to propose heavy tow fabrics with a special process that sprayed the heavy tow filaments to be capable to produce fabrics under 400 g/m2. The mechanical properties of such fabrics are under evaluation. The price reduction has to be confirmed, and also the fact that the mechanical performances and the processability are not to much affect with these new fabrics. Some times with new fibres introduced on the market, the properties given by the suppliers on the first batches are a little bit optimistic. Nether the less, even if the mechanical properties of low cost heavy tow carbon fibres are lower compare to more conventional normal tow (up to 24K), the mechanical properties are not so bad (See table 2 and figure 1). We can also envisage that the traditional tow tensile test performed to determine the tensile modulus and strength is not fully adapted to test heavy tows. Figure 2 show the decreases of the mechanical properties when we increase the number of filament in the tow. When we compare mechanical performance obtained on carbon fibre tow with mechanical performance obtained on composite we traditionally have mechanical performance drop of about 10 to 15% with tows up to 24K. The question is how efficient the heavy tows will be ? If we under estimate the mechanical properties of heavy tow due to a non optimised tensile test procedure this efficiency could be higher. If on heavy tow it is difficult to recover all the filament contribution on the composite structure this efficiency could dramatically decrease to lower values. Number of filaments (K) 12-24 24 50- 80 12-24 70 24-48 48 48-160320 Characteristics (modulus GPa/ Strength MPa) 230/ 3900-4400 230/3000-3500 230/3800 230/4900 230/3400 235/4500 230/4000 200/3000 228/3800 180-240/ 2000-3000 Development Commercial Commercial Development Commercial Development Commercial Available for evaluation Available Available Available Available for evaluation To be confirmed Available

Manufacturer TENAX TENAX FORTAFIL TORAY TORAY

Fibres Standard Low cost 510 and 511 T700S S400C

Cost (Euros/kg) 28 20 17 to 16 (14 in 3 or 4 years) 30-23 < 15 23 17 9-11 17

Availability

Availability

MITSUBISHI Standard MITSUBISHI Low cost Very low MITSUBISHI cost ZOLTEX Panex 33

SIGRAPHIL 16 60 SGL SIGRAPHIL 14.5 160 SGL Table 1 : Low cost carbon fibres on the market.

(SM1) 19-3

Supplier EADS CCR Tensile Tensile Tensile Fibres Elongation Elongation Supplier strength Modulus strength reference (%) (%) (MPa) (GPa) (MPa) TORAY T700GC 12K 5260 2.2 224 4950 2.14 GRAFIL TR50S 12K 4830 227 4670 1.95 GRAFIL TRH50 12K 4900 238 4660 1.9 GRAFIL TR50 24K 4820 246 4390 1.7 FORTAFIL 502 40K 234 3760 1.55 FORTAFIL 510 80K 237 3380 1.37 TENAX HTS 12K 224 4260 1.82 TENAX HTS 24K 244 4510 1.78 TORAY T700GC 24K 244 4790 1.87 ZOLTEK PX33T 48K 228 3800 1.2 222 3470 1.5 SGL C30TO 60K 214 3750 1.68 Table 2 : Comparison of mechanical performance of low cost carbon fibres. Tensile Modulus (GPa) 241 239 250 244

Tensile test on carbon fibre tow 6000 5500 5000 4500 4000 3500 3000 2500 2000 0 K 12 K 24 K 36 K 48 K 60 K 72 K 84 K Number of filament

Figure 1 : Comparison of mechanical performances obtained by suppliers and EADS CCR.

Figure 2 : Carbon fibre performance versus number of filament of tow.

2.2) EPOXY MATRICES. The price of the Epoxy matrices is driven mainly by the service temperature we want to achieve. A requirement with a service temperature of 80C under wet condition is very expansive from matrices point of view. This requirement of a service temperature of 80C means that we need a glass temperature transition with a wet saturated state above 110C-120C. To achieve this specification, we can not used low cost bi functional epoxy systems such as DGEBA, but we need to use high cost tri or tetra functional epoxy systems such as TGPAP or TGMDA. The price of the matrices is also driven by the complexity of the formulation. Very often, the manufacturing of thick parts absolutely needs the utilisation of matrices formulation with low or controlled exothermic reaction to avoid problems of fire inside the autoclave during the polymerisation step. To answer to this requirement, 2 or 3 types of hardeners with different reactivity at different temperature ranges are used to control the exothermic reaction of the polymerisation. To produce high quality composite parts with no porosity, the utilisation of controlled flow resin systems is a real necessity. Today, the flow control is obtained with the incorporation of thermoplastic polymer inside the formulation. Very often, epoxy matrices formulation are made from 2 or 3 epoxy components, 2 or 3 hardeners and additives such as flow controllers. The complexity of such a formulation increase the final price and introduce the problem of material availability. If one of these component is not produce any more,

Strength (MPa)

(SM1) 19-4

problems appears to replace this component in the formulation with additional cost of qualification of this new formulation. Linked to the cost reduction from a process aspect, resins with low temperature manufacturing have been developed. These materials could be cured at temperatures under 100C. But if we need a glass transition temperature after wet ageing of 110C minimum, a curing temperature of 100C is not enough. To achieve this objective we have to make a post cure with a temperature that could be up to 180C. So the money that we save with a curing cycle under 100C could be spent in the post cure phase. As we can see figures 3 and 4, the driving parameter for the glass transition temperature and the degree of conversion is the final temperature of polymerisation we apply to the material. If we absolutely need a high glass transition temperature, we will have to cure these low temperature manufacturing materials as the conventional ones with a 180C final temperature of curing (or post curing out of the mould in a simple oven). The cost reduction if we use these low temperature manufacturing materials will have to be evaluate case by case to validate the real cost benefit. Some tentative have been made with new matrix formulation from natural products, but with no real application in aeronautical industry (3, 4, 5)
Influence of curing temperature
180 Residual of cure (%) Glass transition temperature (C) 160 140 120 100 80 70 90 110 130 150 170 190
16 hours curing 8 hours curing 4 hours 100C+1 hour 180C

Influence of curing temperature

16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 70 90 110
16 hours curing 8 hours curing 4 hours 100C+1 hour 180C

130

150

170

190

Curing temperature (C)

Curing temperature (C)

Figure 3 : Influence of curing temperature on glass transition temperature determined by DSC.

Figure 4 :

Influence of curing temperature on residual polymerisation enthalpy.

3) COST REDUCTION FROM A PROCESS ASPECT.

3.1) TEMPERATURE OF CURE AND TOOLS. From a process aspect, the utilisation of an autoclave with high temperature and long time of polymerisation is also very expensive (6, 7, 8, 9). The high temperature is expensive not only with the energy we need to heat the autoclave, but also with the necessity to use specific tooling capable to resist to pressure and deformation at high temperature. The cost of a composite part tool is higher if the polymerisation needs to be performed at 180C compare to 100C. At 180C we needs steel tools, at 100C, composite or aluminium tools could fulfil the requirement. 3.2) LAYING UP TIME. At the beginning of composite utilisation, structural parts where made from prepreg by hand lay up. To reduce the cost of manufacturing, automated tape laying up machine have been developed to produce large structural parts with a minimum of human intervention. The main use of automated tape laying machine where to produce flat panels. With the utilisation on the latest development of composite materials for high loaded structural part, the consequence is the increase of the composite thickness. Today composite part could achieve 50 mm of thickness. With conventional prepreg (thickness 140 m) it takes a lot of time to lay up the part. A solution is to increase the prepreg thickness. Some first tentative have been made and shows a limit in the prepreg thickness of about 230 m when the prepreg is manufactured with conventional processes as we can see on figure 5. For such thickness of composite, if the prepreg presents some

(SM1) 19-5

defects such as non impregnated area, local porosity, the final composite will also presents these defects. The autoclave pressure during polymerisation will reduce the defects but some defects will still remain in the composite. The difficulty is to produce thick prepreg with no lack of resin and no porosity. If we want to go over 230 m per ply, prepreg manufacturers will have to improve or modify the prepreg manufacturing technique. A innovative way has been proposed with the semipreg technology (10, 11) which consist in recovering a thick dry fibre tape with a thick resin film. The impregnation is done during the autoclave phase with special care to eliminate all the air inside the material. This technology could be considered as very closed to the resin film infusion technique, but the advantage is that you manipulate only one intermediate product (resin+fibre). This new technology needs some work to be technically validated and also need some economic study to validate the cost reduction that could be achieve.
Interlaminar shear test on 2 mm thick coupons
Interlaminar shear strength (MPa)
120 110 100 90 80 70 60 100 150 200 250 300

Individual ply thickness

Figure 5 : Interlaminar shear tests versus prepreg ply thickness.

3.3) ALTERNATIVE INNOVATIVE LOW COST PROCESSES. At the beginning of the composite introduction, all the structural parts where made from prepreg by hand lay up. To produce specific profiles such as stiffeners, the pultrusion technology is an interesting solution to reduce the manufacturing cost (12, 13) . The resin transfer moulding (RTM), the resin film infusion (RFI) or the liquid resin infusion (LRI) could be consider as low cost manufacturing technologies (14, 15, 16, 17) if we completely redesign the part to produce, by reducing for a function the number of sub element to assembly. The preform manufacturing will also have to be as simple as possible to not increase to much the cost (18). To obtain an acceptable cost reduction with these technologies, it is preferable to use, to polymerise the resin, a self heating mould if the number of part to produce is high enough, or a simple oven with the mould inside. The utilisation of an autoclave with these technologies is a factor of cost increase. The stamping technology with thermoplastic consolidated laminates (made from long fibres prepreg) is also an interesting innovative process to produce specific parts (19). The cost reduction will be effective with the process and with the material (no need to store the material at 18C) 3.4) QUALITY CONTROL. Today, all the structural parts are controlled by non destructive technique to evaluate the quality and determine the defects that could be done during manufacturing. A great source of cost reduction will be the development of the on line quality control during the manufacturing process. If these development will success, it will be possible in the future to suppress the non destructive tests performed as an independent additional phase and then to decrease the final cost of the composite parts.

(SM1) 19-6

3.5) COST REDUCTION FROM A DESIGN ASPECT. The design play a non negligible role in the cost reduction of a part. But this aspect is more difficult to analyse as it concerns many factors to take in account, and some of them are not directly linked together (20) . If we consider the final cost of a part with the maintenance cost during utilisation, the global cost of a part is more complex to evaluate. With the utilisation of composite, the maintenance cost is reduce due to the fact that there is no problem of corrosion and less problem of fatigue on composite structures. This maintenance advantage on monolithic composite parts is very important for the end user but very difficult to take in account in the cost estimation of a composite structure. With the design aspect, it seems very interesting to integrate different functions on a part to decrease the sub assembly operation that could take lot of time. The RTM technology is well adapted to reduce the final cost if we integrate lot of function on the part and the cost reduction is achieve mainly on the assembly operation. The main effort in the design offices to reduce the cost is then to reduce the number of subparts to reduce when it is possible the assembly operation. A non negligible work to perform to reduce the cost of a composite structure will have to be done also on the failure criteria of composite structures. Today, due to a lack of precise knowledge, the composite structural parts are not fully optimised (that means that we could reduce the mass of a composite structure) and also the qualification and certification cost could be decrease by reducing the number of structural mechanical tests performed to validate the design and the material.

4) CONCLUSION.
The utilisation of organic composite materials with carbon fibre is now a reality for structural application. The technical benefits are confirmed with a weight reduction between 25% to 40% compare to metallic solution. If the performance is the driving factor for the final choice, the composite will be the solution. If the cost is the driving factor for the final choice, some efforts have to be made to reduce the global cost of existing carbon composite solution. Interesting development have been made by the carbon fibre producers with the development of heavy tows carbon fibre with acceptable mechanical properties. For epoxy matrices, developments are under the way with activities to reduce the manufacturing cost. But with the available products, the final properties of the composite are directly linked with the curing temperature we use, so with the manufacturing cost. For short term application, the main cost reduction should be achieve with the development of integrated parts to reduce the assembly cost. To achieve this objective, the injection technology on dry preforms should be an interesting solution if we do not spend to much money in the preform elaboration. To reduce the cost of composite structures we can reduce the cost of the raw materials but we also have to think more globally to all the process involved to obtain composite structure (design, manufacturing, quality insurance, material qualification, part certification, behaviour modelling, maintenance cost during utilisation)

BIBLIOGRAPHIE.
1) HETTINGER WP and all Ashlands new low cost fiber and carbonizing products for future brake application. SAE paper 860767. 2) KROCK R.P. , BOYER D.C., KISER M.D. Pitch-based carbon fibers for cost efficient composites SAMPE Anaheim, California USA, 6-9 April 1987. P 1447-1460. 3) PORTER J.H., OWEN T.K., HEDGES W.L. The development of epoxy resin composite laminates that are thermoformable at temperature below 200 C and using vacuum pressure. SAE International congress and exposition, Detroit, Michigan, USA, 1995. SAE paper 950557. 4) WILLIAMS G.I., WOOL R.P., Composite from natural fibers and soy oil resins. Applied composite materials, V7, n 5-6 Nov 2000. P 421-432.

(SM1) 19-7

5) CHAN W.S., WANG J.S., Effects of defects in a new form of affordable composite materials-rod reinforcement.. Proceeding of the 1996 ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition. MO ASME ML Atlanta, GA, USA MD 17-22 Nov 1996. 6) US Air force. Non autoclave composite processing reduces fabrication costs in aerospace structures. JOM, Dec.1998 50, (12), p 5 ISSN : 1047-4838. 7) SCRANTON A.B., NARAYANAN V. Photopolymerisation of composite. UK. 1997 Spectra, Graphs 27, p 415-419. 8) GOODMAN P., Advanced low cost composite curing with high energy electron beams. Final report Aug 94-Jun 95. NTIS order number : AD-A297 166/1/XAD. 9) BOKULICH F., Composite processing made affordable. Aerospace engineering (Jan-Feb 1999, 19, (1-2) p 17 ISSN 0736-2536. 10) MILLS A., BACKHOUSE R., Innovative materials and manufacturing processes for the cost effective manufacturing of composite airframe structures. 44th International SAMPE symposium and exhibition, Long Beach, CA, USA, 23-27 May 1999. P 2255-2267. 11) BAe, Low cost wingboxes for civil aircraft. Advanced composite bulletin (Jan 1996), p 2-3 ISSN : 0951-953X 12) CHANDRASHEKHARA K., FLANINGAN V.J., BERRING N.S., UNSER J.F., Pultruded resin from soybean oil. 44th International SAMPE Symposium and Exhibition, Long Beach, CA, USA, 23-27 May 1999. 13) NASA, Low cost concept uses pultruded rods to stiffen aircraft structures. Advanced materials (28 Feb 1994) 16, (4), p 2-3 ISSN 0734-7146. 14) Mc DONNEL DOUGLAS, Development of a stitched/RFI composite transport wing. Report number N96-17712/6/XAB. 15) CIBA, Low cost composite process steps up to full scale component testing. Advanced materials (24 July 1995) 17, (14), p 3-4 ISSN 0734-7146. 16) DUPONT L., AGUILAR M.E., POIRIER A., An objective study of resin injection machines for resin transfer moulding of both low cost products and advanced composites ICCM/9, Vol III, Madrid Spain 12-16 July 1993. 17) BRADLEY J.E., WYSOCKI T.S., Low cost composite manufacturing utilizing intelligent pultrusion and resin transfer moulding (IPRTM). SAMPE Journal (Jan-Feb. 1993) 29, (1), 4, p 2225 ISSN : 0091-1062. 18) NASA, Advanced resin system and 3D textile preforms for low cost composite structures Report number N95-29035/9/XAD 15. 19) SOULES D., LIN B., Development and characterization of a new low cost composite system SAMPE conference Advanced materials : expanding the horizons, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, 26-28 Oct 1993. 20) CHAMIS C.C, Design concepts for low cost composite engine frames. Journal of Composite technology Res V 7 n2 Summer 1985 p 41-48.

(SM1) 19-8

QUESTION/ANSWER FORM LOW COST COMPOSITE STRUCTURES

Name of Author Paper Number Name of Discusser

J Cinquin 19 M French

Question:

1. Does a large tow carbon filament reduce modulus in the product? Follow up comment: Good as carbon used for stiffness rather than strength for a lot of applications. 2. Thick prepreg, did there appear to be higher level of voids?

Answer:

1. No, not seen any reduction in modulus. 2. Global voiding was similar but suspect resin penetration into tow was less for the thick prepreg.

ONCE THIS FORM HAS BEEN DULY COMPLETED PLEASE RETURN TO THE AVT PANEL ASSISTANT THANK YOU