The Fraunhofer Institute for Material and Beam Technology IWS has achieved decisive progress towards new ecological aircraft construction concepts through the development of the CONTIjoin CO2 laser welding process for continuous thermoplastic composite joining.
The process was developed within the Clean Sky 2 MFFD (Multifunctional Fuselage Demonstrator) project and has been demonstrated on an 8×4 metre CFRTP fuselage section.
CONTIjoin is a chip-less, adhesive-free joining method that bonds thermoplastic composite panels using precisely controlled CO2 laser energy, eliminating the need for mechanical fasteners in fuselage assembly.
Dr. Maurice Langer from Fraunhofer IWS provided multiple quotes describing the process capabilities and the next steps, which include increasing the technology readiness level (TRL) of the ESL2-100 module.
Source: www.iws.fraunhofer.de
