Composite Materials: A Way Forward in Aviation Technology?

Given that they have virtually superseded aviation-grade aluminum alloys of the previous generation, are composite materials really represents a genuine advance in aviation technology?


By: Ringo Bones


From the vantage point of most people – including me in most circumstances – who only have an insider-like glimpse of the inner workings of the engineering side of the aviation and aerospace industry through the Discovery Channel and National Geographic. One can easily be excused of harboring a superficial perception that composite materials – like Kevlar and carbon fiber – has advanced the aviation and aerospace industry by leaps and bounds. Especially when only knowing that the advantages of composite materials are their high strength-to-weight ratio and their only disadvantage are the high initial cost when compared to Duralumin and other aviation-grade aluminum alloys. But do we “civilians” really seeing the big picture when it comes to the aviation and aerospace industries’ current fascination with composite materials from an engineering standpoint?

In our present energy consumption and global warming conscious globalized society, the high strength-to-weight ratio of composite materials can be seen as a godsend when it comes to their use by the airline industry. The lighter weight of aviation-grade certified composite materials means more fuel savings that easily translates not only in reduced airline running cost but also in substantially reduced carbon dioxide emissions without sacrificing the safety previously provided by significantly heavier aviation-grade aluminum alloys of the previous generation. Given these advantages, are composite materials really represented a significant advance in aviation from an engineering standpoint?

During the heyday of aviation-grade aluminum-based alloys, special attention was particularly paid to the wings. Almost every conceivable sort of test was conducted. Small sections of the wings are purposely cut with a saw, and then the section is artificially “aged” on testing machines which apply and release pressure in just the way it would occur in flight. Whole wings were taken into the strength testing laboratory and repeatedly bent up and down as would occur in an airplane’s typical lifespan. Back in those days, a Boeing 707 were undergoing such test were a design prototype of its wing was bent upward nine feet without breaking. And a lift of 425,000 pounds was required to actually buckle the wing.

Even back then, testing techniques in the aviation have in fact reached the stage where it is at least theoretically possible to guarantee that an airplane rolling off the end of a production line, will take off and fly for its entire lifetime without any significant failure. This, however, would assume a Utopian State of affairs of faultless materials in the airplane’s construction along with impeccable maintenance and use.

Testing does not end when a typical jetliner is delivered to an airline company. The Federal Aviation Administration, from the results of earlier tests, certifies that it will not require a major airframe overhaul until the plane has amassed 6,000 flying hours. Although during that period the airplane’s structure is frequently given a visual “twice-over” by airline maintenance personnel. When it reaches the 6,000-hour mark, however, the plane is sent to the company’s overhaul base for a complete examination.

The aircraft is first inspected visually and by x-ray machines similar to those used by a physician. In another test, ultrasonic generators send high-frequency sound waves flowing through a section under inspection and the wave pattern is displayed on an oscilloscope, like a test pattern on a television screen. If a flaw is present, it will show up as a deviation in the pattern.

Still another inspection technique is the dye check. Structural metal is first treated with a penetrating red dye, then covered with a white liquid, which dies into a powder. If there are substantial cracks, the red dye will bleed through the powder along the length of the crack. If the detected flaw is minor, it is repaired; if major, the whole structural section – a wing panel, for instance – is replaced. These extensive tests to maintain airline safety were already de rigueur during the heyday of aluminum alloy based planes.

But when it comes to the inspection of the airworthiness of our newfangled composite material-based aircraft, signs of damage and of structural fatigue are unfortunately invisible to the naked eye and our unaided senses. Detecting flaws in composites-based aircraft structures requires specialized equipment like ultrasound generator-based testing machines to detect minor cracks and micro-fractures. This will be an increasing necessity, especially when current and upcoming civilian air transports will be almost all totally made up of composite materials like Kevlar and carbon fiber. Something the airline industry will be very reluctant to invest during our still fiscally austere global economic climate. And economics, if you recall, is an integral part of good and sensible engineering.

With the new generation of composites-based jetliners slated to replace the older aluminum alloy-based jetliners like the Airbus A380 and the Boeing 787 Dreamliner – which are made mostly of composite materials, especially in the wing and fuselage section – be seen by most airline companies as not economically viable? The climate-friendly prestige surrounding new generation composites-based jetliners might prove too tempting to resist by most airline companies, given the potential fuel savings that could result. But if the investment in newer maintenance and diagnostic test equipment to maintain the well-being of these newfangled composites-based jetliners prove more costly than the resulting fuel savings, airline companies won’t be buying these jetliners as their manufacturers have been hoping to sell like hotcakes. Not even if these newfangled aerospace-grade composite materials enabled those new generation of fighter jets to fly up to Mach 1.5 without resorting to afterburners – i.e. supercruise capability.

Is Amelia Earhart Still Relevant Today?

With a new Hollywood movie retelling her aviation exploits, does Amelia Earhart still register in the national consciousness of America – or the rest of the world?


By: Ringo Bones


Short of making Paris Hilton to endorse and promote a civilian sport aviation version of the F-35 Joint Strike fighter. Or is it a modernized more “fuel efficient” equipped-with-a “six-pack” Pratt & Whitney F100 afterburning turbofan-all-carbon-fiber-version of the XB-70 Valkyrie - as something of a must-have for every woman of means in post subprime mortgage crisis America. Boron-enriched aviation fuel not included? I wonder if the latest Hollywood rollout of a movie retelling the aviation exploits and adventures of the Great Depression era aviatrix named Amelia Earhart is aimed at cashing in on the burgeoning feminist movement for those folks too young to have seen L7 perform Wargasm live. After all, aviation is a skill – rather than a gender – driven endeavor. Or maybe I’m just too young to had experience first hand the chauvinism and misogyny of the early part of the 20th Century.

Whatever the political baggage that goes with the retelling of Amelia Earhart’s piloting skills to achieve scores of aviation firsts is only a fraction of a very fascinating story. After all, the suppositions that surrounded Earhart’s disappearance during the Pacific leg of her round the world flight – from her distress call received in Florida to theories of her being abducted by aliens capable of interstellar travel – do spice up the factual aspects of her achievements.

Born in Atchison, Kansas in July 24, 1898. Amelia Earhart was educated at Hyde Park High School, Chicago and attended the Ogontz School for Girls in Rydal, Pennsylvania, Columbia University and other schools. In 1917 and 1918, she served in a nursing corps in Canada. Amelia Earhart learned to fly in California and continued her interest aviation after moving to Boston, where she took social work and teaching. She crossed the Atlantic on June 17 to 18, 1928 in a trimotored Fokker with Wilmer Stutz as pilot and Louis Gordon as mechanic. This flight probably served as a dry run for Earhart’s solo Atlantic flight of May 20 to 21, 1932. Later, Amelia Earhart made her solo Pacific flight from Hawaii to California on January 11, 1935 which she was the first woman to do both crossings. In 1931, Amelia Earhart was married to George Palmer Putman and during that year she set an autogiro – i.e. an early version of the helicopter with an unloaded rotor - altitude record. On an attempted flight around the world, Amelia Earhart was lost somewhere near Howland Island in the Pacific with her navigator, Fred Noonan, early in July 1937.

Earhart’s disappearance over the Pacific of her attempted flight around the world sparked a host of speculations and anecdotes. Some whimsical and fanciful and others bordering on the absurd. Quite a large number of people do believe that Amelia Earhart was a victim of alien abduction. This theory of her disappearance was even featured in an episode of Star Trek Voyager. There’s even a credible witness who swore that she received Earhart’s distress call while listening to a radio receiving set in Florida. Though the distress transmissions by Earhart might have been transmitted that far away by a freak condition of the Kennelly-Heaviside Layer or what we now call as the ionosphere.

The most likely and credible explanation of Amelia Earhart’s disappearance during the Pacific leg of her attempted flight around the world is either she ran out of fuel and crashed in some remote corner of the Pacific Ocean. Or was forced to land on a Japanese Imperial Army occupied island and was taken prisoner for being an American spy. Earhart was very likely executed by her captors or had died of disease and starvation given that Japanese soldiers were notoriously “Spartan” when it comes to stocking up on necessities like food and medical supplies.

So is the latest Hollywood movie retelling the exploits of Amelia Earhart achieve the same aims as does Earhart’s aviation exploits during the Depression-era America of raising the people’s spirits? Could be, but what fascinates me more is that Amelia Earhart managed to avoid becoming a shrinking violet in the face of aviation competition. Consider her rivals at the time, the lion cub toting Roscoe Turner, the über-rich Howard Hughes. Not to mention Whiley Post, a one-eyed aviator pioneer who couldn’t get an FAA flying license these days due to his major vision problem who managed to fly around the world in July 1933 on a modified Lockheed Vega named the Winnie Mae. Add to that the 1934 B.F. Goodrich made pressure suit in which Whiley Post use as he sought to break the then airplane altitude record of 47,352 feet. By the way, the Wiley Post pressure suit was used in some “realistic” science fiction movies of that time.

Given the stiff competition, it does seem like a miracle that Amelia Earhart did managed to establish her own niche in the short but very crowded roster of 20th Century aviation history. Although there is still a dreadful lack of women aviator pioneers. I can’t even for the life of me remember that American woman USAF test pilot who set a world’s speed record on the F-104 Starfighter during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Or what modifications were made on the MiG 25 FOXBAT that Valentina Tereshkova used during her extreme high altitude record attempts. Jena Yeager – who co-piloted the Voyager non-stop round the world flight back in 1986 is probably the only woman aviator besides Amelia Earhart that is taught in history classes in American schools.

Altruism and Humanitarianism in Aviation: Not Economically Viable?

Ever since that incident in July 2008 when the price of crude oil and aviation fuel reached sky-high, is using planes to help the unfortunate now too expensive?


By: Ringo Bones


Maybe it was the news back in January 5, 2009 when Mission Aviation Fellowship – a Christian charity working in Mongolia – racked-up debts of up to 2 million US dollars to their aviation fuel suppliers. Thus placing Mongolia’s equivalent of Australia’s Royal Flying Doctors in really dire straits. Even though the crude oil price spike of July 2008 seems like a distant memory, especially half a year later when on average it is 3 times cheaper in comparison. The failure to hedge aviation fuel when it was cheap or hedging too soon before it became sufficiently cheaper not only endangered the big airline companies, but also budget airlines and their humanitarian / charitable counterparts as well.

Airplanes and other forms of aircraft are the primary mode of travel in Mongolia due to the vast distances separating between villages and towns. Not to mention the prohibitive sums of money that could be involved in creating paved roads to connect these towns and villages. Travel across Mongolia other than by air can be extremely inconvenient, especially during the winter months when a car breakdown can easily result in an unfortunate motorist freezing to death. Traditional pastoral sheepherders are the primary recipients of the vital medical aid provided by Mission Aviation Fellowship.

While on the African continent, Zambia’s national airline suspends its operation due to high aviation fuel costs back in January 11, 2009. Given that most of Africa has been plagued by still unresolved peace and order issues; air travel had since become the de facto safest mode of transport on the continent. While man-portable surface-to-air rockets are still a relative rarity for those rogue militants operating in the continent and they can only hit planes flying at 10,000 feet or less, air travel is indeed the safest way to travel across most of Africa. Lets just hope that these rogue militants never manage to acquire large truck-mounted surface-to-air missiles capable of shooting down planes flying as high as 120,000 feet. Until then, if they can afford the relatively high fuel and aircraft maintenance costs, most – if not all – humanitarian organizations operating throughout Africa should stick with air travel.