In recent years, the aerospace industry has greatly benefited from advanced materials like fiber-reinforced polymers (FRPs). These materials, made by combining a polymer matrix with fibers like carbon or glass, offer excellent strength-to-weight ratios, corrosion resistance, and durability. They are used in many aircraft parts to make them lighter and more fuel-efficient, which also helps reduce emissions.
Given these advancements, what's the next generation of aerospace materials?
- The next generation of aerospace materials builds upon the advancements made with fiber-reinforced polymers (FRPs) and focuses on materials that offer even greater performance, efficiency, and sustainability. For example an nanocomposite Graphene-Reinforced Polymers, These composites utilize graphene’s exceptional mechanical, thermal, and electrical properties, providing significantly enhanced strength and conductivity over traditional carbon fiber composites.
First of all, we have to remember that aero industry is quite conservative. The new materials are not kindly hardly approved by the engineers. For the new composites the main issue is to avoid the use of REE (Rare Earth Elements), they should be design according to: circular economy, low carbon footprint and use of biobased (plant) polyols. From the other side, all types of nano composites have an issue in way of the homogenity in the industry scale. Summarize, there is no sure what kind of material will be the golden grail within aero indystry, but for sure it won't be the aluminium but as you have mentioned, one of the FRPs.