Construction and Manufacturing
11 March 2024
R&D case: Advanced Laminar Flow tAilplane (ALFA)
Leading edge manufacturing by fibre placement with dry fibres and with prepregs
Construction and Manufacturing
Construction and Manufacturing
Construction and Manufacturing
04 March 2024
Exploring Large-Scale Additive Manufacturing
Large-Scale Additive Manufacturing (LSAM) can deliver enhanced efficiency, cost-effectiveness and design flexibility for composites cure tooling for Aerospace applications. For a while now NLR operates its own LSAM setup with success and actively participates in various projects dedicated to exploring this process. In a whitepaper NLR addresses the complexities and challenges but it also elaborates on how to make use of the full potential of the LSAM technology.
Construction and Manufacturing
28 February 2024
COMPASS targets 30% waste reduction in aerospace
Co-funded by the European Commission the COMPASS project aims to revolutionise the remanufacturing of end-of-life parts into high quality components. This will lead to significant resource savings and promote a circular economy approach in the aerospace and automotive industries.
Sustainability and Environment
04 July 2023
R&D case: Liquid hydrogen composite tanks for aircraft
Hydrogen has been identified as a key priority to achieve the European Green Deal for a sustainable economy. By converting the construction of the hydrogen tank from existing metallic solutions to composites, the liquid hydrogen (LH2) composite tank will achieve weight savings that enable the advancement of liquid hydrogen as a sustainable fuel source for civil aviation. This will lower the carbon footprint of air travel and extend the flight range of aircraft by reducing construction weight and cost.
Construction and Manufacturing
26 June 2023
NLR and ECOMAT join forces in the field of innovative and sustainable aviation
During the Paris Air Show, the German ECOMAT and Royal Netherlands Aerospace Centre signed a Memorandum of Understanding. With this, the two parties want to combine their scientific and business expertise with regard to lightweight constructions, hydrogen developments, materials research and virtual product development in the aircraft manufacturing industry.
Construction and Manufacturing
11 April 2023
Innovative solutions from a new technology for sustainable aviation
Royal NLR is aiming to improve two things at the same time: saving weight for aviation structures and speeding up their production processes. NLR is therefore exploring a relatively new technology called large-scale additive manufacturing of fibre-reinforced thermoplastic materials.
Maintenance and Repair
05 April 2023
Better predictions of metal fatigue in engineering structures
Fatigue of metals can cause premature failure of components and structures that are subject to cyclic loading. To avoid that risk, designers still employ a theory from the 1960s. Royal NLR has now come up with a new equation for calculating the growth rate of cracks under cyclic loading better. The proof of this has recently been published in the journal Engineering Fracture Mechanics.
Construction and Manufacturing
04 April 2023
R&D case: MovAbles for Next generaTion Aircraft (MANTA)
The objective was to manufacture three Ti-6Al-4V flaperon ribs by Direct Energy Deposition (DED). With conventional manufacturing processes, it can be very costly or even impossible to produce components with such complex shapes. However, DED is also challenging due to various features inherent in the design: bulky thin parts, asymmetric geometry, overhanging features etc. The main challenge was manufacturing all the structures with the minimum distortion and highest accuracy.