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On Jun 25, 7:34*am, jcarlyle wrote:
And just in case pilots of composite aircraft feel good due to the high fatigue life of their planes and general lack of corrosion sensitivity, be aware that composites are very susceptible to out of plane impact damage. A stone hitting a composite can cause (almost) invisible delamination between layers inside the composite. The effect is that one moment you're flying along without a care and the next moment you have a huge hole in your wing *or control surface (for example). Of course, you have dozens of examples of huge holes in wings and control surfaces resulting from stone strikes - right?. German manuals tell you to look for "pressure damage"; what they mean is to look for a small nick made by a stone hitting the composite. If you find such a nick, a simple way to determine if there is underlying delamination is to use a 1/8" diameter drill rod and drop its blunt end onto the composite's surface from about an inch away. If you hear a high pitch ring, it's OK; if you hear a dull thunk sound you've got a delamination. You can get an idea how big it is by marking out the extent of the area where the dull thunk sound is heard. Ultrasonic inspection is used to search for delamination damage in military and commerical aircraft. -John A coin works as well as a drill and yes, everybody who owns a composite glider probably knows the trick. Delaminated areas are easy to fix. As for aging gracefully, try parking a mid sixties Labelle next to any aluminum glider. I'll take composite structures any day. However, I'll stay away from 40 year old metal gliders. |
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