Mr. Jan Willem Gunnink
Chief Executive Officer
Mr Gunnink has extensive experience in the development of FMLs, starting with work on ARALL at TU Delft. Some further highlights include being the Dutch Program manager of the GLARE Technology Plan (GTP) for the GLARE fuselage for the A380, as well as his R&D work on new FML grades and new splicing concepts. Since 2005 Mr Gunnink has been CEO of GTM Advanced Structures, where he remains heavily involved in FML R&D.
Presentation
Advanced Hybrid Materials (AHM) and Structures - A decade of new developments at GTM
The application of the glass fibre grade of Fibre Metal Laminates (FML), i.e. GLARE/2024-FML, has led to a significant amount of R&D on these grades of FML. During the last decade GTM has developed new concepts in the field of Advanced Hybrid Materials (AHM) and Structures for Aerospace as well as Space applications.
After extensive investigation of GLARE/2024-FML for fuselage structures GTM developed about a decade ago for wing structures the CentrAl concept in cooperation with Alcoa. Never mind the good fatigue performance this material configuration turns out less suitable for wing structures. Further research shows that new AHM could be developed which have good basic material performances and are much less complex and lower in cost than the CentrAl concept. These new AHM is applied in the lower wing demonstrator manufactured for Constellium, which will be presented by Constellium at this Conference.
A new optimization tool for AHM is developed showing the good fatigue performances of AHM outside the well known FML grades.
Local reinforcement of advanced aluminium structures with AHM components show surprisingly improvements of static performances of the component, allowing for additional weight savings.
New AHM laminates are developed, which can replace Titanium parts and realize cost savings for these parts.
Extensive investigations have been performed on different splicing concepts, starting with the standard overlap configuration as is applied in the Airbus A380 fuselage. This investigation has shown that further optimization of the splicing concept is possible and that alternative concepts with respect to the overlap splicing concept can even lead to better performances as well as easier manufacture of the structures. To reduce the cost to manufacture components, additional new splicing concepts are developed, which allow production of ultra large sized panel structures for wing as well fuselage applications.
Additional R&D towards cost reduction of AHM structures have shown that the rather expensive milling of structures can be substituted by an optimized water jet cutting operation. Also alternative prepreg for 2024-FML has been developed, which gives substantial cost savings at even better performances over the incumbent product.
R&D on Space FML has been performed showing excellent performances of this grade of AHM. New grades of AHM for MMI (Micro Meteorite Impact) protection have shown excellent results at HVI (High Velocity Impact) tests with speed of over 7km/s.
New Space FML grades for electromagnetic shielding (radiation protection) are under development.
