In the longer term, Army aircraft can be product of all composite materials, and the Prototype Integration Facility Advanced Composites Laboratory is set.
Part of the Aviation and Missile Research Development and Engineering Center’s, or AMRDEC’s, Engineering Directorate, the Prototype Integration Facility’s, PIF’s, Advanced Composites Lab has successfully designed and made repairs on damaged composite aircraft components for several years now.
From research and development to implementation and rapid prototyping, advancing composites technology is one among AMRDEC’s core competencies that enable the present and future force.
The PIF Advanced Composites Lab is one of many teams on the AMRDEC working with composites.
Composite materials are a mixture of fabrics that, when combined, produce a brand new material with characteristics different from the person components. Examples of composite materials are fiberglass, Kevlar, and carbon fiber. Composite materials could be preferred for plenty reasons, including increased strength, reduced weight, and reduced production and sustainment cost.
“We are becoming as strong and as light as we will get with metals, and we’re on the end of what metals can economically do,” PIF Advanced Composites Lab lead Kimberly Cockrell said. “The only thanks to get stronger and lighter and more capable for the fight is to visit composites.”
PIF leadership recognized a necessity for advanced composites repair and commenced developing a composites capability in the PIF mission to produce rapid response solutions to the warfighter. This system includes repair design and engineering substantiation to teach that repaired components are returned to original strength.
Personnel within the PIF Advanced Composites Lab designed and developed repairs for damaged composite stabilators at the UH-60M Black Hawk helicopter and the AH-64E Apache helicopter. Previous to their repair method, the only real method to repair an aircraft with a damaged stabilator was to tug off the broken stabilator and replace it with a brand new one.
Cockrell said the “pull-and-replace” approach was costing the military as much as six figures per stabilator replacement.
While the primary repair procedures were designed for Black Hawk stabilators, the repair method applies to any solid laminate or sandwich core composite structure, so the procedures and coaching might possibly be leveraged to other Army aircraft.
Cockrell is pleased with the lab’s achievements. Its repair procedures are the primary approved repair for primary composite structure on Army aircraft.
With integral support from the AMRDEC’s Aviation Engineering Directorate, the procedures for the composite stabilator repairs was written and are undergoing popularity of release by the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Life Cycle Management Command, or AMCOM, Logistics Center.
An important aspect of developing repair methods is operating with the repair personnel who will make the repairs. Members of the PIF Advanced Composites Lab had been training Soldiers at the new stabilator repair procedures sooner than deployment in order to request approval to exploit them, on a case-by-case basis, in the course of the Aviation Engineering Directorate.
The lab has also trained the instructors on the 128th Aviation Brigade, in addition to the AMCOM logistics assistance representatives.
In addition to training, the PIF Advanced Composites Lab, in partnership with the Aviation Engineering Directorate, played a lead role in developing the military Technical Manual 1-1500-204-23-11 “Advanced Composite Material General Maintenance and Practices,” in addition to in defining the tooling and material load for the hot AVIM composites shop set.
The lab is currently working repairs for blades too, in addition to just-in-time tooling for parts with complex curves or topography.
And moreover repair solutions, the lab is using composite materials to create solutions for other issues. For instance, it has designed and built a composite doubler to reinforce the hat channels that stretch from the hinges of the UH-60 engine cowling.
“When the aircraft is at the ground being maintained, the engine cowling folds out to become a maintenance stand,” Cockrell explained. “Two Soldiers can get up there with a device box and work at the engine. Unfortunately, minor damage to these hat channels may cause these (cowlings) to catastrophically fail and seriously injure the warriors.”
“We designed this piece in order that — if the hat channel shows any sort of damage whatsoever — you could simply install this doubler over the damaged area; it is going to restore the cowling to its original strength or better, and two doublers — one on either side of the cowling — adds not up to a pound to the final aircraft weight,” Cockrell continued. “So the pound that you just add is definitely-definitely worth the safety margin you gain.”
It’s concepts like that, Cockrell said, that the lab is introducing to program managers to turn how the lab might be useful with greater than just repairing stabilators.
“Our goal is to transition the stabilator repair business to other sources of supply, because we all know that once we get these repairs fully fielded, there’ll be new structures and composites issues for us to work,” Cockrell said. “The Apache composite tailboom, new composite cabin frames, new composite cabin floors, and new composite blades are all coming down the pike.”
“In five to ten years, it’s all composite,” he said. “So whether it’s fiberglass or carbon fiber or Kevlar or a hybrid, it’s going all composite quickly. And it’s important for the military to be ready.”
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AMRDEC is a part of the U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command, which has the mission to develop technology and engineering solutions for America’s Soldiers.
RDECOM is a first-rate subordinate command of the U.S. Army Materiel Command. AMC is the Army’s premier provider of materiel readiness — technology, acquisition support, materiel development, logistics power projection, and sustainment — to the full force, around the spectrum of joint military operations. If a Soldier shoots it, drives it, flies it, wears it, eats it or communicates with it, AMC delivers it.
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