The exhaustive use of light advanced polymer composites into the development of the future high-efficiency long-range commercial aircrafts (primary) structures for increasing strength while decreasing weight for lower fuel consumption and less pollution has attracted great attention in the last decade. In this context, solutions for the integration and joining composites into the aircraft structures metallic sub-assemblies or components, while providing the necessary strength to sustain heavily loaded joints, are urgently required. The paper comes to meet an area of interest for many researchers and large integrators and manufacturers, by presenting several type of metallic join geometrical designs, along with metallic joint part integration solutions into a composite structure directly during production. Performances evaluation of the developed metallic join geometrical designs was performed in static regime by means of �pull-out� compressive tests. The paper focuses on the strength of the hybrid metallic/advanced polymer composites joints. It was concluded that an efficient design of the metallic joint and a proper transition from hybrid to the composite structure can lead to proper integration solutions while assuring safety requirements.

The extension of use of light advanced polymer composites from structural parts of an aircraft to all kinds of components of the engine is presently very limited by the knowledge of both technological development process and materials behaviour during service. The paper comes to meet an area of interest for many researchers and large integrators and manufacturers, by presenting the first steps made into the manufacturing of a carbon fiber reinforced composite blades for a centrifugal compressor impeller. An existing metallic reference impeller was redesigned, air flow studies were achieved to establish new design performances, precursors (type, volume fraction, architecture, distribution) were defined for the CFRP (Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer), stress analyses were performed on proposed structural materials configurations. Furthermore, the paper award an important section to manufacturing process stages, the manufacturing technology used and first developed trials. It was concluded that an entire impeller CFRP (Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer) manufacturing can and shall be the next step of the study, using autoclave technology.

Low velocity impact tests were conducted on quasi-isotropic [�45/0/90o]xs laminates under drop weight impact from 0.7m, corresponding to a 30J energy. In this respect modified epoxy blends reinforced with carbon and Kevlar woven fabrics laminates were developed using autoclave technology. The four configurations developed for low velocity impact tests aimed at investigating several aspects like: the effect of fiber type, stacking sequence and mainly technological processing parameters, on the impact performances. The recorded Load-Time curves were plotted and visual inspection, high resolution laser scanner were used to observe the fracture characteristics of the impacted composite laminates. The results obtained showed that for tested configurations, both stacking sequence and processing parameters directly linked to fiber volume fraction, have a strong effect on the impact performances. The amount of absorbed energy, ductility index was calculated for each configuration under study. The results obtained showed that hybrid configuration exhibits lower stiffness and damage initiation energy amount when compared to carbon reinforced configurations. Nevertheless, their damage propagation energy amount and ductility index was the uppermost. This behaviour was already reported previously [1] and is partially attributed to the higher elastic energy absorption of carbon fibers that delays the propagation of delamination, and fiber breakage. Lower tenacity obtained on hybrid laminates was attributed to both lack of resin local rinse saturate and to the intrinsic anisotropy of para-aramid fibers.