Light Weight For Today’s and Future Metallic Airframes: an Update on AIRWARETM Developments and Applications

Within the today’s challenges for competitive commercial aircraft, as reduced environmental impact, reduced operating cost and more comfort for the passengers, the right material choices play a key role.

Concerning the reduced environmental impact, the optimized structural weight to reduce fuel consumption is fundamental. Close collaborations between material supplier and airframer allow to optimize design by using lightweight technologies as AIRWARE^TM. In complement to the lightweight structure, the full life cycle of the airframe needs to be taken into account, from the fabrication up to the dismantling of the aircraft structure, in particular for commercial aircraft programs lasting at least 30 years. The AIRWARE^TM low density alloys allow a 100% recycling loop, minimizing the environmental footprint. Also from a cost point of view, the full recycling loop has great interest for the customer. In close customer collaborations, win-win situations can be generated for the supplier and the airframer for competitive business cases.

Recent commercial aircraft programs as Airbus A350XWB and Bombardier CSeries selected the AIRWARE^TM technology for primary structure parts. Metal quantities per airframe became significant, so that investments were needed to respond to the market needs. Constellium switched from an industrial ingot by ingot technology to a full size industrial AIRWARE^TM cast house technology. The step change of technology allows further acceleration of future developments in order to further face the today’s market challenges.

From an intrinsic AIRWARE^TM alloy properties point of view, AIRWARE^TM shows step change improvements in fatigue, corrosion and easiness in assembly, in particular friction stir welding (FSW). These characteristics are still exploited only partially, so that AIRWARE^TM technology is only in the beginning of future airframe improvements.

An overview of Constellium‘s AIRWARE^TM technology will be presented including its use in advanced assembly concepts. Comparisons to today’s flying structures will be mentioned as baseline in order to better appreciate the step-change which has been made in the last decade.