Introduction of Continuous Fiber-reinforced Polymer: A New Additive
Manufacturing Path for Aerospace EPR2023019
To grow the application space of polymer additive manufacturing (AM), the
industry must provide an offering with improved mechanical properties. Several
entities are working towards introducing continuous fibers embedded into either
a thermoplastic or thermoset resin system. This approach can enable significant
improvement in mechanical properties and could be what is needed to open new and
exciting applications within the aerospace industry.
Introduction of Continuous Fiber Reinforced Polymer: A New Additive
Manufacturing Path for Aerospace examines a couple of unsettled
issues that are beginning to come to light regarding these materials and focuses
on the ability to design and provide robust structural analysis for continuous
fiber reinforced polymer AM—unsung aspects that can make or break this new
technology as it finds its way into the aerospace market. Without solutions to
them, adoption by the aerospace industry will be limited to point design
applications, thus constraining the technology to being nothing more than a
specialized tool.
