Airframe is described as the mechanical structure of an aircraft that are generally used excluding engines. Designing airframe is a challenging field of engineering, as balance of performance, reliability and cost is to be achieved by combining the knowledge of aerodynamics, materials technology and manufacturing methods. [Wikipedia, Et. al.]
Manufacturing Airframe is becoming a tough process. Strict quality control and government regulations have to be followed by Manufacturers. The crash on takeoff of an Airbus A300 in 2001, after its tail assembly broke away from the fuselage, called attention to operation, maintenance and design issues involving composite materials that are used in many recent airframes. The A300 had experienced other structural problems but none of this magnitude. The incident bears comparison with the 1959 Lockheed L-188 crash in showing difficulties that the airframe industry and its airline customers can experience when adopting new technology.
Advanced materials are widely used for high performance aircrafts to manufacture airframe. The reduction of weight was always a challenge by the replacement of aluminium with composites or other superalloys. Aircraft manufacturers are always on a look out for new technologies that can provide better value with reducing the total life cycle costs of a commercial aircraft. This can be achieved with composites compared with the metals since the design and the production costs must be lower when compared. There are many advantages of using lighter; the main advantage is
maintenance cost is lower when compared with the metal structures. The composite materials are affo
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