Recent Constellium Product Developments for Wing Applications

With the successful start of a game-changing AIRWARE™ cast-house to produce advanced Al-Cu-Li alloys at a fully industrial scale, metallic wings have regained interest with airframers for next generation of both single-aisle and twin aisle aircraft, after a period clearly dominated by composite structures.

AIRWARE™ alloys can indeed offer a weight saving vs legacy alloys ranging from around 4% if only density reduction is taken into account, up to more than 20% with redesign, enabled by significantly improved usage properties and the use of advanced assembly technologies. Even if their properties show a step change compared with those of legacy alloys, AIRWARE™ alloys also benefits from the track record of aluminium usage by airframers and sub-contractors, which make them easy to adopt and ready for high build rates.

In parallel, current aircraft as well as some of their derivatives are looking for advanced non-Li containing alloys for both skin, stringers and internal structure applications.

In this paper Constellium developments targeting wing applications will be presented, starting from advanced 7xxx and 2xxx alloys, through AIRWARE™ alloys that are now being selected for various parts and to our newest AIRWARE™ products currently being engineered at Constellium’s Voreppe Reasearch Center. Manufacturing aspects that are key to enable large scale production of all these products in a fully reliable manner will also be detailed. In order to get the best from all these new product developments and to prepare a yet further enhanced offer, tailored to each specific need, Constellium’s preferred option is to work in strong collaboration with our customers, creating multi-disciplinary teams so that the combination of competencies can really lead to optimised outcomes.