Manufacturing of Nano-treated Lower Panel Demonstrators for Aircraft Fuselage

Improved robustness is seen as a key technology enabler for reducing the required thicknesses of composite structural parts; this reduction would, in turn, lead to direct savings in the structural mass. The aim of this study was to produce one reference and two nano-treated lower panel demonstrators for investigating the effect of nano-reinforcement on the damage tolerance behaviour of skin, stringers, bondline and on the electrical conductivity of CFRP. The selected technology, resulting from development and experiments undertaken within the SARISTU project, is carbon nanotube (CNT)-integrated prepreg material M21/34%/UD194/T800S, which is treated by University of Patras. The studies on damage tolerance improvement performed within the scope of Application Scenario 09 were used as input during determination of the manufacturing parameters for the selected co-bonding process. The demonstrators are curved panels whose overall dimensions are 2868 mm length and 1120 mm width, and that are stiffened with four omega stringers and four mechanically fastened frame pieces. This chapter reviews the design and fabrication of manufacturing tooling, the design and production of the various individual components, integration of the DiAMon Plus™ online cure monitoring system by INASCO and the assembly at TAI of the stiffened skin with the composite mousehole frames designed and manufactured by SABCA.