TOD – Thermoplastics on Doors: Development of full scale innovative composites doors, surrounds and sub-structure for Regional Aircraft Fuselage barrel on-ground demonstrators. Innovative overall manufacturing and assembly approach and preliminary results obtained at the early stage of the project

Abstract

Thermoplastic composites can reduce cost and save weight in airplane structures. Currently on the market there is no thermoplastic door available for commercial aircraft. The overall goal of TOD project is to demonstrate and validate the manufacturing process of thermoplastic door components, induction welding assembly process, additive manufacturing and metallic parts of door mechanism, metallic and thermoset parts of surrounding structure of the passenger and service door of an aircraft. The activities of TOD project have received funding from the Clean Sky 2 Joint Undertaking under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement number 821192.

Optimal Design and Testing of a Thermoplastic Pressurized Passenger Door Manufactured Using Thermoforming

“…Thus, the thermoforming process appears to be a very promising manufacturing technology for TPCs. An additional significant impact of thermoplastic material exploitation is out-of-autoclave manufacturing process development (which can potentially save up to 75% on energy consumption compared with the autoclave process) as well as weight and waste reductions [ 24 ]. All these attributes lead to a significant reduction in eco-impact throughout the life cycle of a structure.…”