Manufacturing and Costs of Current Sandwich and Future Monolithic Designs of Spoilers

Abstract

Spoilers of large commercial aircraft are often realized in composite sandwich design. Over the past few years, many studies have been focused on finding highly integrated composite structures that can replace such sandwich designs. The motivation is given mainly because of commercial aspects, which from a structural point of view are difficult to justify. Sandwich structures have the intrinsic property of high bending stiffness and are therefore perfectly suitable for the plate-like design of an aircraft spoiler. However, monolithic structures can be produced with a lower cost, and their subcomponents can be easily integrated in a single part. Two monolithic alternatives, which meet all structural requirements, are considered with respect to applied materials, manufacturing processes, and manufacturing costs. The established designs are compared with a standard sandwich spoiler, and thus a holistic view is provided on the selection of designs, processes, and materials for future aircraft spoilers.

Development of Aircraft Spoiler Demonstrators for Cost-Efficient Investigations of SHM Technologies under Quasi-Realistic Loading Conditions

“…Upper skin and lower skin are fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) lamina. The considered spoiler and an overview of the control surfaces of an Airbus A340 aircraft wing [30] is given in Fig. 1.…”

Development of Aircraft Spoiler Demonstrators for Cost-Efficient Investigations of SHM Technologies under Quasi-Realistic Loading Conditions

“…The upper skin and lower skin are fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) lamina. The considered spoiler and an overview of the control surfaces of an Airbus A340 aircraft wing [43] are given in Figure 1. A design load case is considered as the reference load, where the spoiler has to withstand the aerodynamic pressure during landing.…”