Aircraft Started with the Wright Materials
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Aircraft Started with the Wright Materials From 1903 to 1909, six years after the historic first flight of the Wright Brothers, the main constituents of aircraft were wood, silk or cotton fabric, and steel guy wires. Wood was used to construct the aircraft frame instead of aluminum because of its unreliability when subjected to heavy stresses during landing. Although aluminum was used in the motor of the Wright Flyer, it was not widely used until the 1930s. Steel tubing handled stresses better than pure aluminum tubing, but even steel tubing buckled under the shock of landing. Therefore, the need for a strong, lightweight material resulted in some manufacturers' using bamboo for aircraft frames. However, wood was preferred over bamboo because it was easier to use and was more easily replaced. The wooden wings, rudders, and fuselage were covered with fabric made of silk or cotton thread that was "proofed" (insulated) with either rubber or celluloid. The fabric was closely woven so as to be nearly airtight. This lowered the air resistance and provided a tough, tear resistant covering that could be stretched over the framework. Steel piano wire was used in the guy wires and served to carry tension between struts in the wooden frame. This combination of wood, fabric, and steel wire was used for both monoplanes and biplanes— in 1909 neither the monoplane or the bioplane showed significant advantage over the other. Materials had to work reliably with the stress loadings incurred at the then "breakneck speed" of 45 to 50 miles an hour. Wood continued to be used in aircraft structures until World War II. In 1937 the British de Havilland DH91 Albatross airliner was molded as a plywood-balsaplywood sandwich laminate. In 1940 the de Havilland DH98 Mosquito fighter plane, using a similar plywood-balsa-plywood laminate, represented the high point of wood aircraft construction. By 1950, aluminum, magnesium, steel, and plastic had become the mainstay of aircraft construction. The nonferrous materials (those that are made without iron, i.e.,
aluminum and magnesium), were supplemented with new materials being explored for use by the aircraft industry, such as titanium and beryllium. These lightweight metals were strengthened and made corrosive resistant by alloying them with zinc, manganese, and zirconium. This strengthening and anticorrosion process could also be accomplished by cladding, or coating one material with another. The nonmetallic materials used in constructing aircraft included plastics, glass fabrics, and synthetic rubber. By the 1950s the requirements for engine parts capable of withstanding high temperatures drove the development of ceramics and ceramic coatings to protect metal. In the early 1960s the invention of graphite fiber and boron fiber made available advanced composite materials for use in aircraft construction. These advanced composites were made with an epoxy matrix. The composites were superior in both strength and stiffness to conventional aircraft materials. Composites are made up of two or more mate
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