Background
Aircraft are highly complex structures that require extensive maintenance. A major portion of this maintenance effort relates to health and usage monitoring; another is repair and replacement.
Adhesively bonded composite patches are a superior solution for repair and lifetime extension of airframes, primarily due to reduced stress concentrations compared with mechanically fastened repairs. Such repairs reduce aircraft downtime, reduce maintenance and labour costs, and increase the life of the aircraft.
One of the key factors in the adhesive bonding process is the surface preparation of the substrates to be joined. Current methods in the aerospace industry consume considerable amounts of time and require special training.
This research will evaluate plasma treatment (Figure 1) as an alternative energetic technique. This method sidesteps many of the disadvantages of current pre-treatments, such as debris, environmental issues and health and safety concerns.
Benchmarking
The aim of this project is to compare one of the most popular surface treatments in the aerospace industry (abrasion) against the plasma method. Different joining conditions will be used in order to define the processing window.