Team:The team realizing the technology is comprised of Fiberforge, 3Dyn, and Cutting Dynamics, Inc.--exclusive licensee of Fiberforge technology for commercial aircraft seating
Reducing the weight of aircraft seating with advanced composites made with recyclable thermoplastic resins. Thus, optimizing the fuel efficiency of today's and tomorrow's commercial aircraft. Note: one pound saved is worth $500 in net present value of fuel savings on a commercial aircraft.
This is the first application of thermoplastic advanced composites to radically save weight in commercial aircraft appications. These materials are recyclable and leverage tremendous fuel savings during the operational lifetime of the aircraft.
Individuals will benefit marginally more affordable air flights assuming some of the efficiency benefits of lighter weight aircraft seats will inure to the passengers. Society will benefit with such benefits as reduced CO2 emissions, reduced aviation fuel consumption, safer and longer lasting aircraft seats, and cleaner air in areas where Fiberforge's non-reactive thermoplastic technology displaces reactive and carcinogenic thermoset composites technology. The economy will receive benefits as the cost/benefit ratio for lighter weight aircraft seats is approximately 1/10. The environment will benefit the potential for thermoplastics to be fully recycled at the end of their 2 to 5-times longer life, their benign chemistry, and their direct impact on fuel economy.
The project has worldwide potential as both today's and tomorrow's aircraft need affordable composite solutions for their interior components. This project illustrates how an innovative manufacturing process can be applied by an innovative manufacturer and implemented broadly by numerous customers seeking a reduced environmental footprint and reduced operation cost at the same time. It is a leading example of a tripple-bottom-line application that will help shepherd advanced composites made with carbon-fiber and thermoplastic resins into broader energy saving applications, such as lightweight automobiles.
quantitatively: each pound saved on an aircraft will leverage $500 in fuel savings: this benefit will inure to each of the four aspects above.qualitatively: the impact of leading with a new manufacturing process that promisses to radically lower the cost of advanced composites and enable them to reach previously unserved transportation markets will again impact all of the four aspects and gain tremendous exposure in a market that's being noticed more and more for its disproportionate contribution to global CO2, VOC, and NOx emissions.
Ecological: the project uses thermoplastic resins that are bio compatible and benign to organisms as a matrix material that holds inert technical fibers (such as glass, carbon, and aramid) in place and enables structures that are 5 to 10 times stronger than metals, and which don't rust or corrode. Social advantages include highly automated manufacturing of advanced composite seat frames with the Fiberforge process enable manufacturing jobs to occur in developed countries with strict environmental and labor practices as opposed to competitive composites processes that are employed in developing countries with little regard to worker safety or manufacturing emissions of VOCs thermoset resin reactions. The economical advantages of this project enable it to compete with existing thermoset solutions while maintaining high standards for manufacturing cleanliness.
This project leverages clean energy in two key ways. One is in the transportation sector where lighter products save energy, last longer than the incumbent solutions, and are recyclable. The other is in their manufacture, where they are made with a novel clean and efficient manufacturing process being commercialized by the team for this groundbreaking application.