Aircraft materials and hardware Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Aircraft materials and hardware - Essay Example The choice of the right material for a particular overhaul job stresses understanding of the common physical and chemical properties of different metals. Another aspect of aircraft maintenance and repair is that aircraft hardware is frequently ignored since of the insignificant size of the parts. But, selection of right hardware for the use in aircraft is very vital for the efficient operation and safety of any aircraft. The goal of this essay is to emphasize the importance of material, its various process and hardware selection for the use in aircraft structures (faa.gov, ND). Introduction The earlier aircraft materials must refer timber as the first materials used to create a power-driven aircraft. The Wright brothers involved mainly of Sitka spruce and bamboo fastened and bolted together to make a canvas-covered assembly. Aircraft made by wooden material were very successful in the initial years of flying. Currently, timber is only fit for fairly small aircraft. As the requirement for larger aircraft became unavoidable for the modern society, materials with superior specific strength come to be essential. Currently airplane consists mainly of aluminum alloys with steel, titanium alloys and polymer compounds. The equilibrium of materials does rest on on the kind of airplane as military fighter airplanes have much higher amounts of composites and titanium alloys. In this essay more emphasize is given to aircraft materials and its different processes. Pure aluminum and Aluminum alloys Airplane must be made of material with lesser weight to carry more loads and to reduce fuel consumption. The more travelers an airplane can transport the more income an aircraft corporation can create. At the same time as pure aluminum have less weight, very good corrosion resistance and exceptional thermal and electrical conductivity but it is weak and ductile to be used on aircraft structure in its pure form. The credit goes to Dr. Alfred Wilma, a German metallurgist, who found out that aluminum alloyed with copper and heat treated properly can be made much sturdier. The alloy of aluminum with 4% copper is said to be Duralumin and the heat treatment procedure is termed as precipitation hardening. After this Duralumin have characteristically little specific gravity and great strength (450 MPa). Since it is restricted to a maximum amenity temperature of around 660Â °C supplementary heat treatable aluminum alloys have been developed for aircraft use. These comprise a variety of intricate aluminum-zinc alloys which improve the maximum strength of several aluminum alloys. These alloys have used for contemporary aircraft design in which the skin of the fuselage and wings are stressed aluminum alloy parts that lessen the total heaviness of the aircraft. The disadvantage of the aluminum alloys discussed above have a drawback of not being as corrosion resistant as compared to pure aluminum. Therefore a thin coating of pure aluminum is usually fused to either sides of the alloy and is called Alclad aluminum alloy. Even though titanium is very costly it is used where great strength is required in load bearing applications for example, landing gear and engine escalating supports