Materials and Manufacturing Technology for Aerospace Application

This paper gives an overview of current work in materials and manufacturing technology for aerospace application. Finding the best material to use for a particular application is not simple and it depends on many factors including mission requirements like performance and safety, design requirements, strength to density ratio, operating temperature, and material technology prospects like current state of affordable materials/processes technologies. Materials with high specific strength have long been popular with the aerospace industry, as aerospace vehicle made from such materials provide the required strength with less weight, thereby increasing payload and reducing operating cost. Typical examples are polymer matrix composite and aluminum-lithium alloys for aerospace structures. In liquid rocket propulsion systems, improved high-temperature capability offers the greatest performance payoff, with improved mechanical strength and lower weight also being important. For spacecraft, materials with improved resistance to radiation and atomic oxygen are required. Since before a material can be used in an aerospace system, it must be qualified for use, materials qualification procedure is also presented with an example of shared data.