TECHNICAL DEVELOPMENTS IN THERMOPLASTIC COMPOSITE FUSELAGES

Tomorrow's aircraft fuselage will have to meet increasingly optimized performance requirements and cost reduction objectives. The use of com posite materials, associated with the development of new industrial sc enarios should enable both these objectives to be achieved. For the la st three years, a thermoplastic composite fuselage has been under stud y [1] and development within the framework of a research project assoc iating Aerospatiale Aircraft, Eurocopter and Dassault-Aviation. Two te chnological processes studied in this research project, a thermoplasti c ''sheet forming'' process and a process called ''in-situ consolidati on'' are presented and several examples of aeronautical applications a re given.