From golf clubs to airliners
Composites went from golf clubs to half an airliner's weight because of strength and stiffness for their weight, not strength alone. The hard part was never the material; it was making aerospace-quality parts, big and identical, every time. That is what fibre placement made possible: the 787's forward fuselage is laid up in one piece by AFP.
Predict · at 1:22 in the video
So, a quick guess. What share of a Boeing 787's weight is composite?
More than half. For comparison, the 777, the generation before, is about twelve percent composite, and much of that is non-structural, like interior panels. In the 787, composites carry the load.
Automated Fiber Placement: Status, Challenges, and Evolution, Ramy Harik & Alex Brasington.
- Chapter 1, section 1.E
Simulations in this lesson are our own. Where the numbers are invented to show a mechanism, the video says so on screen.
