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1. Introduction
Plastics are becoming increasingly important in the Aircraft industry
today. The types of plastic materials available are numerous and it
is in order to select those of interest of British manufacture and to
collect together their typical properties that this review has been
undertaken.
The properties of these materials make them suitable for such
applications as radomes, wing tips, flooring, window frames, air ducting,
airscrew spinners, drop tanks, experimental compressor rotor and stator
blades made from glass polyester laminates; drop tanks, guided missile
wings, experimental wings etc. made from asbestos phenolic laminates; jigs and
tools of glass polyester, paper and cloth phenolic laminates; goers and
bearings from the parer and cloth reinforced phenolics as well as from
nylon and polytetrafluoroothylene; winds, canopies etc. from polymethyl
methacrylate; sandwich structures using plastic foamed cores;
adhesive for many types of bonding.
The value of reinforced plastics lies not only in the properties
of the materials, but also in the fabrication methods available. In
general only relatively low pressures are necessary, and in some cases
pressure is not needed at all. Large and quite complex components can
be moulded in one piece without resource to the more expensive dies and
equipment needed for equivalent metal parts. These methods enable
prototypes and small quantities to be produced economically and at the o
other extreme lend themsel7es to quantity production.
It is not intended that this review should be comprehensive, and
no reference has been made to the electrical properties of the materials
selected. It is very difficult to give data that is accurate in all
cases, as the strength of these materials will depend on the manufacturing
techniques employed ... [cont.]. |
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