12mo ago

Recycled Carbon Fiber Tested on Boeing MAX 9 Sidewalls

aviationweek.com

Scrap Composite Material Gets Second Life on New Aircraft | Aviation Week Network

How much is 25 lbs. of fuel savings worth to you? How much is it worth to Boeing?

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It looks like this material is being used for interior cosmetic components, not load/stress bearing structures:
While the sidewall panel project is awaiting additional unique tooling and funding, Boeing is exploring recycled carbon fiber for additional cabin components, such as sandwich panels, which Wynhof said are used all over the cabin in nonloadbearing structures that don’t need to have the same sound-dampening requirements as sidewall panels, such as lavatory and galley walls, partitions, monuments and bins. She said the company hopes to test them in the “very near future.”
So things like the interior plastic "wall" you can touch when you're sitting in the window seat. It sounds like a good use for this material if it is otherwise scrap, and has better characteristics than the virgin materials they're using today for these parts.
How much is 25 lbs. of fuel savings worth to you? How much is it worth to Boeing?
United Airlines switched to lighter paper for in-flight use to save 11lbs source
From that article:
"With United Airline's 4,500 daily departures, it made sense to cut 1 oz. from its in-flight magazine, and switch to a lighter paper (weighing 6.85 oz.) instead. What this means in a larger scale, says the Times, is that the airline is saving 170,000 gallons of fuel a year which amounts to $290,000 in annual fuel costs."
- Interesting, I know they used to sell special thin airmail paper for international letters, so it makes sense.
As long as the doors keep falling off, I'll prefer Airbus
- Doors? There was more than one?
  
  Well.....not anyMORE!!!
  
  During the current door plug accident investigation, NTSB found more Boeing 737s in service with "loose hardware" or "hardware in need of tightening" on their door plugs. So yeah, doors.
the s in 'scrap' is silent
- Actually, it's pronounced "mortally unsafe"
Go recycle that piece of shit tumor you call a capsule currently stuck dead to the side of our space station too. Turn it into beer cans.
They saw OceanGate and said, yes let’s build our planes like that.
- The reverse. OceanGate saw how planes were being built and said, "let's do that for submersibles!" even though in airplanes, composites are subjected to <1 atmosphere of tension loading and <2g aerodynamic loading, whereas their submersible was going to be subjected to >400 atmospheres of compression loading, and a much more corrosive environment.
  Composites in aircraft have a fairly long and uncontroversial history, and there's nothing inherently wrong with them in that application. The biggest problem with composites is what happens with them at the end of their service life. Finding ways to recycle them without compromising safety is a good thing, and if it weren't for Boeing having such a damaged reputation at the moment I think nobody would bat an eye.
I guess they have to do something with all the crashed planes.
Boeing: "how can we make the shittiest, most plasticky cramped hellhole ever imagined in the sky, even worse ?"

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