Mike Rapoport wrote:

Since most of the new airplanes and all of the new high performance single
engine designs are composite. Metal is a great material for airplanes but
it is difficult to produce perfect shapes with in the thin sheets used in
light aircraft. If you want to get more performance from your new design it
is going to need ripple free compound curves over the entire fusilage and
this is really hard to achieve with .025 sheetmetal. In other catagories,
like utility aircraft, it doesn't seem (to me anyway) that a new design is
going to offer much more than current planes like the 182 or 206.

The auto companies seem to have found ways to do this, and Audi even
does this with aluminum. Yes, you need some internal structure to
provide stiffness, but these structures can be easily stamped or
hydroformed as well as the skin. Just look inside a car that has had
the interior stripped, or look under your hood or trunk lid. This
technology is readily available, it has just never made its way into
light aircraft.


Matt