Just a little side info on composites....
Composites present their own set of manufacturing challenges that make repeatability more difficult than metals.
Some of these challenges are:
Controlling environmental variables like temperature and humidity,
Controlling the fiber orientation, quantity, quality, cleanliness,
Controlling curing procedures, autoclave etc.
Designing based on a statistical failure model.
Unlike metals where you can definitively say when it will fail based on a known amount of load and number of cycles, with a composite you can only say something like:
"90% of the parts tested lasted through 1 million cycles,
75% of the parts lasted through 2 million cycles and only
10% of the parts lasted through 5 million cycles".
The failure of composites can only be defined as a statistical model.
Manufacturers are getting better and better at making composites the more they learn and refine the manufacturing processes. The aerospace industry is developing many new composites to cope with extreme demands. This technology is beginning to trickle down to other markets......
