Leading the way in thermoplastic composites

Arnt Offringa is director Research and Development at Fokker Aerostructures, which has a leading role in thermoplastic composites for aerospace applications. He has been working at Fokker for thirty years and already published articles about thermoplastic composites a quarter of a century ago. We asked him about the transition the aircraft industry is going through from metal to reinforced plastics and from thermosets to thermoplastic matrices. He also discusses new manufacturing techniques like conduction welding and co-consolidating.