Strength in materials

This month Aerospace Manufacturing's Mike Richardson turns the spotlight on materials solutions provider AGY, one of the world leaders in high performance glass fibre products for the aerospace market.

Aerospace Manufacturing and BCI Aerospace together profile world-class aerospace industry suppliers of note. This month Aerospace Manufacturing's Mike Richardson turns the spotlight on materials solutions provider AGY, one of the world leaders in high performance glass fibre products for the aerospace market. Think of glass and what normally comes to mind are windows and drinking vessels. However, glass in a composite fibre form is an altogether different proposition as it possesses the kind of mechanical properties that allow designers to do some pretty spectacular things. So when optimum strength, dimensional stability, corrosion resistance, weight and cost performance are required, many critical products used in the aerospace sector turn to glass fibre. With a product portfolio developed for extreme performance utilising a set of manufacturing platforms, high performance glass fibre specialist, AGY provide tailored material solutions to end-users for the most demanding aerospace applications, including helicopter blades, aircraft flooring, fuel tanks, cargo liners, interiors and primary/secondary structural parts. The company's E glass and S-2 Glass reinforcements offer improved properties, including strength, fibre toughness, tensile and compressive modulus, and impact resistance that are critical to high performance aerospace applications. Glass fibre reinforcements perform well across a wide variety of the resin systems currently used in the aerospace market. Six of the best In fact, high performance materials in the form of S-2 Glass fibre yarns and reinforcements provide AGY's customers' with six vital enhanced properties: strength, impact resistance, stiffness, temperature resistance, fatigue resistance and radar transparency. “We offer the kind of glass fibre products that are used in some very high-end applications, providing solutions to the defence and aerospace sectors, such as glass composite armour panels, aircraft interior applications demanding very lightweight/high strength and exterior applications such as the GLARE systems that make panels for the Airbus A380,” begins AGY's new business development manager, Iain Montgomery. “The advantages of glass fibre over carbon fibre are that it has much higher strain to failure which translates into increased impact performance. So for areas on an airframe requiring impact performance like the wing leading edge, glass fibre is normally the preferred option over carbon composite. In the real world this would give glass a significant advantage over carbon fibre products in damage resistance.” Montgomery claims that as glass fibre manufacturers go, AGY manages to differentiate itself from the competition by demonstrating an efficient scalable manufacturing set-up, which means it is much more flexible in providing tailor-made solutions for the customer. “AGY is capable of ‘tweaking' its glass products to perform exactly the way the customer requires in terms of the properties it will exhibit,” Montgomery continues. “We have the ability to manufacture product in very small quantities - all the way through to the larger quantities of our competitors. Many of the fibres we manufacture are destined for the aerospace industry, but we'll sell them into a weaver or a pre-pregger first. What we've come to appreciate is that these weavers and pre-preggers are constantly being pushed by the aerospace OEMs to reduce costs, so we try to help them by offering mutual partnership agreements.” Typically, AGY's glass fibres are used as lightweight, high strength fabric solutions for the aircraft industry including luggage bins, side walls and floor structures. “Some of our S-2 Glass high performance fibre goes into the enclosed structure of luggage bay liners that has to meet strict resistance to flame tests,” he states. “Our materials not only pass these high temperature tests but must be robust enough to withstand the high impact of passenger luggage loading and unloading cycles in order to remain in service for a number of years before it requires replacing.” Although most glass fibre technologies have been around for some time, Montgomery says AGY continually evaluates its current products and technology programmes with customers and in doing so can develop new, high performance fibres with improved mechanical properties in order to enable designers to develop the next generation of products for tomorrow's aircraft. “Our current high performance fibre is called S-2 Glass but we are already working on the next generation of fibres programmes called S-3 Glass,” he adds. “We've made huge investments in developing the capabilities of S-2 Glass as a result of growing military and aerospace demands. So, whilst we've been experiencing steady growth in the defence industry, we're now seeing significant growth from the aerospace sector too. It's an interesting twist, because it's not just that there are more aircraft being produced, it's that these aircraft are becoming more composite-intensive as they are being developed.” Getting down to business Montgomery notes that the last Aeromart Toulouse B2B event was a very useful exercise for AGY and a great way of doing business. “We arranged a number of face to face meetings at Aeromart – some of which were more successful than others – but overall, I felt that the outcome of our meetings was very positive and we met the people we really wanted to see,” Montgomery confirms. “Due to Aeromart's focus, companies get to meet the relevant decision makers and people who can and will drive the decisions through the organisations. Aeromart plays a vital role in the aerospace sector and enables AGY to concentrate its efforts solely within the market.” According to Montgomery, events like Aeromart allow AGY to see what new technologies are coming on stream and where glass fibre can be utilised in these burgeoning products. For him, it provides an opportunity to meet key industry people that are already using AGY's products, enabling the company to understand where customers are using them and how they would like to use them in the future. “We had a good number of conversations with people who were already using glass fibre, but wanted to do things differently in readiness for the next generation design of products,” he concludes. “We also met potential customers that had never previously considered using glass fibre. The meetings at Aeromart enabled us to better plan our development roadmap in going forward.” www.agy.com Organiser of leading industry events, BCI Aerospace is the Adhesion Group's specialised division for the aeronautics, space and defence sectors www.bciaerospace.com

Related Articles

Spain gains ground

In partnership with EADS, BCI Aerospace's international business convention is set to consolidate Spain's position on the aerospace map with the launch of its Aerospace & Defense Meetings
12 years ago Features

Uniting the supply chain

Aerospace Manufacturing's Mike Richardson discovers how BCI Aerospace's international business convention intends to unite - in one venue - Boeing's entire tier suppliers and global subcontracting network.
12 years ago Features

Matchmaking concept hits the UK

This month, we look at a new event coming to the UK based on BCI Aerospace's unique matchmaking concept. Aerospace & Defence meetings Bristol, taking place on 12-13 April 2011, will give OEMs, tier one and two suppliers
13 years ago Features
Most recent Articles

Carter enjoys success at HAI HELI-EXPO event

Acknowledged as the World’s largest vertical aviation conference and trade show, HAI HELI-EXPO 2024 provided precision bearing specialists Carter Manufacturing a perfect opportunity to exhibit its extensive range of aerospace bearing installation, removal and testing tools, along with PMA bearing options.
1 day ago News

Login / Sign up