1. Main motivations

The main reason for using composite materials to build structures for aeronautical products is to save weight while retaining excellent mechanical properties.

Composite materials are also virtually insensitive to fatigue, compared with metallic materials, which require regular monitoring of fatigue crack propagation in structural parts.

What's more, composite materials are not subject to corrosion. However, they do require good electrical insulation when assembled with light-alloy parts between the composite and the metal, to avoid galvanic corrosion of aluminum if the reinforcing fiber is carbon.

Composite material manufacturing techniques enable complex shapes to be obtained directly by molding, making it possible to produce in a single part an assembly that in metal would require several sub-components. This significantly...