Taking aircraft manufacturing out of the oven

A new film of carbon nanotubes cures composites for airplane wings and fuselages, using only 1 percent of the energy required by traditional, oven-based manufacturing processes. Photo: Jose-Luis Olivares/MIT — A new film of carbon nanotubes cures composites for airplane wings and fuselages, using only 1 percent of the energy required by traditional, oven-based manufacturing processes.
Photo: Jose-Luis Olivares/MIT

New technique uses carbon nanotube film to directly heat and cure composite materials

Composite materials used in aircraft wings and fuselages are typically manufactured in large, industrial-sized ovens: Multiple polymer layers are blasted with temperatures up to 750 degrees Fahrenheit, and solidified to form a solid, resilient material. Using this approach, considerable energy is required first to heat the oven, then the gas around it, and finally the actual composite.

Aerospace engineers at MIT have now developed a carbon nanotube (CNT) film that can heat and solidify a composite without the need for massive ovens. When connected to an electrical power source, and wrapped over a multilayer polymer composite, the heated film stimulates the polymer to solidify.

The group tested the film on a common carbon-fiber material used in aircraft components, and found that the film created a composite as strong as that manufactured in conventional ovens — while using only 1 percent of the energy.

The new “out-of-oven” approach may offer a more direct, energy-saving method for manufacturing virtually any industrial composite, says Brian L. Wardle, an associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT.

“Typically, if you’re going to cook a fuselage for an Airbus A350 or Boeing 787, you’ve got about a four-story oven that’s tens of millions of dollars in infrastructure that you don’t need,” Wardle says. “Our technique puts the heat where it is needed, in direct contact with the part being assembled. Think of it as a self-heating pizza. … Instead of an oven, you just plug the pizza into the wall and it cooks itself.”

The Latest on: Out-of-oven composite manufacturing

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The Latest on: Out-of-oven composite manufacturing

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