Chapter 15Applications in Aircraft and Mass Transportation

Written in cooperation with Thorsten Eymael and Nina Schick, SE Kunststoffverarbeitung GmbH & Co. KG, Germany

Passenger safety must be a foremost consideration in the use of plastic parts for aircraft and other transportation vehicles. Only material grades that conform to the strict directives of fire prevention can be utilized.

In this chapter several such applications will be described. In order to fulfill the requirements of the directives, the materials must have several specific properties, as are detailed in this chapter.

The history of flight is about reaching higher upward through innovative design and better materials.1 As a result, aircraft have become more fuel‐efficient, increasingly more comfortable, and safer. With all these developments today’s aviation industry is more complex than ever before. To be more competitive and create differentiated designs, manufacturers are tasked with staying abreast of the latest material solutions that ultimately deliver better performance around critical demands such as safety, total cost of ownership, and weight reduction.

For the aircraft industry, rising fuel prices and taxes are requiring that aircraft manufacturers design the most lightweight and fuel‐efficient aircraft possible. Aircraft manufacturers are also looking to meet safety, aesthetic, and performance requirements in business and first‐class seating and other interior components, while at the same time ...

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