Design for Limited Life Aircraft

The increased demands on aircraft manufacturers to produce low cost, low weight, high reliability aircraft has pushed the need to enable bonded only primary joints. Bonded joints require much less cost, decreased labor and lower joint profiles that canpermit increases in fuel and range. The proposed program approaches this problem from application of new probabilistic design methodologies to development of new techniques to ensure optimum bond quality at low cost. Foster-Miller will team with BoeingSt. Louis to bring bonded primary joints to the X45 UCAV.Foster-Miller will develop ultrasonic approaches to cleaning and bonding joints that ensure ultra-clean surfaces, enhanced surface wetting and rapid assembly of bonded joints. Solid state cure techniques will be applied offer full cure with minimalpositional tooling, providing significant savings in tooling and assembly time. These benefits will be quantified using probabilistic methods at Boeing and will be based on a large database developed during the program. A final full-scale demonstrationwill address the scale-up issues necessary for rapid insertion into the UCAV program. (P-01296)