Understanding Safety Managament System

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School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering

BP070 - Bachelor of Science (Aviation)

AERO2487 Sustainable Aviation And The Environment

Assessor : Associate Professor Roberto Sabatini

Individual Assignment Submission

Opportunities and Challenges of Aerospace Composite Material

Author:

Tok Jia Sheng, RMIT ID: 3532501, HP: 92995028

17/02/2016

1.        Executive Summary

In the past decades,  Earth's climate system had received clear negative impacts brought upon by human activities. These negative impacts including global climate change, intense heat waves  and accelerated sea level rise can be observed across all continents. If left unchecked, the continuation of carbon-intensive human activities will inevitably boost the likelihood of profound impacts on the ecosystems and all levels of society. Aviation sector is considered as a major contributor of climate change amongst other industries. This is mainly due to aircrafts' high emission of greenhouse gases which is especially devastating when given off at high altitude in the course of flights. Aircraft emissions are mostly by-products of fossil fuel combustion in the aircraft's engine. Fuel combustions although inevitable during all periods of flight, can be reduced significantly with a number of effective solutions. One of the major solution is to improve on aircraft fuel efficiency, leading to lessen combustion in the aircraft engines and ultimately cutting down on aircraft emission.

Aircraft fuel efficiency can be improved using various methods like better aerodynamic design, improved engine and reduction of aircraft weight. The focus of this paper would be the use of composite materials for structural weight reductions of aircrafts. Application of composite materials poses great reductions on aircraft structural weight and holds remarkably positive effects on the future Aviation sustainability. Composite materials are still under-going intensive research to overcome identified hurdles within Aviation sector.

Research efforts, existing applications, restrictions and future trends of composite materials in the Aviation industry are discussed in the report. Last but not least, solutions and future recommendations of composite materials are clearly listed, followed by a detailed conclusion drawn at the end of the report to summarize all issues discussed.

Contents

1.        Executive Summary        2

2.        Introduction        4

3.        Commonly utilized Fibers and Composite Materials        6

4        Challenges and research efforts of aircraft composite materials        10

4.1        Fire Behavior        11

4.2        Damage Detection        12

4.2.1        Optical Fiber Damage Detection        12

4.2.2        Lamb Wave Damaged Detection        12

5.        Composite Materials Disposal and Recycling        13

5.1        Recycling        14

6.        Future of Aerospace composite materials        16

6.1        Biodegradable Composites (Green Composites)        16

7.        Influence on aircraft design and manufacturing (Commercial Liner)        18

8.        Conclusion        21

9.        References        23

2.        Introduction

Anthropogenic greenhouse effect, also more commonly known as global warming or global climate change has been long accepted as a legitimate environmental problem. It refers to the increased in global temperature as a result of greenhouse gases produced by human activities (McCright and Dunlap, 2000) .  These human activities that produces greenhouse gases are not only caused by a single agent, but rather, a vast number of individuals and different industries (Gardiner, 2006). Studies have shown that over the past 100 years, the average global temperature has increased by approximately 0.6 °C and the global temperature has been projected to be on the rise at an alarming rate (Root et al., 2003).