Three years of industrial production of AIRWARE® plates, sheets and extrusions: A solid platform for future developments

Recent commercial aircraft and space programs such as Airbus A350XWB, Bombardier CSeries or Falcon Spacex selected AIRWARE^® technology for primary structure parts. Metal quantities per airframe are significant, so that investments were needed to respond to the market needs. Constellium switched from an ingot by ingot prototype casting technology to a specially-designed and full-scale industrial AIRWARE^® cast house. Since its 1^st qualification in 2012 and the 1^st ramp-up phase, the capacity has been doubled recently to follow the customer demand.

Industrial quantities of sheets, plates and extrusions have been delivered for the major commercial aircraft and space programs. Significant statistical data are available showing robustness and improvements compared to initial standards. The intrinsically good fundamental properties including fatigue, fatigue crack growth or corrosion can now be demonstrated on significant data sets covering a large thickness range, which could even be extended up to 7”.

Including the increase of customer experience of AIRWARE usage and manufacturing, an ideal platform for future developments targeting high performance and cost effective solutions has been created.

After an overview of today’s Constellium‘s AIRWARE^® technology including customer experiences and applications, examples of ongoing developments for further cost/performance enhancements covering the product, process and manufacturing approaches will be discussed.