Cost of Alternative Techniques for Manufacturing Composite Aerospace Designs

Aerospace companies are in a continuing battle to increase the performance and reduce the weight of their aircraft structures, while lowering acquisition and operating costs. Thus, there is always interest in new materials with higher performance and lower manufacturing and ownership cost than aluminum, which is widely used in aerospace manufacture because of its strength and weight. A new material that offers to deliver these benefits is composite materials. Performance of composite materials in aerospace applications is superior to conventional structural materials such as steel and aluminum. Composite materials and their manufacturing processes can be tailored specifically to given design constraints. Recently, additive manufacturing is evolving as one of the promising technology for parts production in aerospace industry. This article describes several composite part manufacturing techniques such as manual or hand layup, tapelaying, resin film infusion, resin transfer molding, pultrusion, etc., and their cost components and benefits are analyzed.