A new approach to designing composite parts for aerospace

Saving weight is critical in the aerospace industry, to reduce fuel consumption and environmental impact. A common way to do this is to replace metal parts with composite equivalents. However, this is a challenge for interface parts because they are subject to out-of-plane loading – which can cause delamination.

SKF can overcome the problem using two approaches. The first is a programme called Black Design, which makes high-performance, out-of-plane loaded parts from fibre-reinforced materials. The second is the way it can integrate traditional and composite bearing design into a single system...

Read the full article in the July issue of DPA