Bonding exercises: A challenging issue for composite manufacturers

If a company can reduce the time and materials used to stick multiple composite components together, it will reduce total production time and cost. So all users of composite structures – manufacturers of aircraft, wind turbine blades, motorsport technology and, increasingly, mainstream automotive equipment – are eager to perfect the bonding process. But relying purely on adhesives is not easy.

“Because we are always chasing weight and cost, bonding parts together is an efficient way of doing that and it could lead to lower-weight structures,” said John Cornforth, head of airframe and special product technologies  at GKN Aerospace. “In both metals and composites, we often make individual  piece parts, drill holes in them, and then  we countersink them, remove the burrs and fasten them together. If you bond it in one hit,  it is likely to be a cheaper process.”

But aerospace is a naturally conservative industry and the adoption of adhesive-only joining techniques is slow.