Composites & innovation: STELIA Aerospace presents the Arches Box TP project, exclusively at Paris International Airshow

In forty years, High Performance organic composite (HP) based on carbon fibre has become essential in civil aircraft aerostructures, representing today over 50% of the total weight of a last generation aircraft such as the A350 XWB or the B787. Among its benefits: faster implementation cycles, excellent properties in terms of fire/smoke resistance and toxicity, and easier recycling.

A key player in the aerostructures field, STELIA Aerospace, participates in many research platforms with its partners and his historical customer Airbus, through R&T projects, in collaboration with the CORAC (Council for Research in Civil Aeronautics) and many French IRTs (Institute of Research and Technology).

Therefore, in order to be always more performing in terms of accompanying its customer's future requests, STELIA Aerospace has invested several million euros since two years in the Arches Box TP project, within the CORAC platform, along with five partner companies, all experts in the thermoplastic structure field (PORCHER Industries, AVIACOMP, the CETIM in Nantes, Groupe Institut de Soudure and SINTEX NP).

Using STELIA Aerospace's R&T infrastructures in Meaulte (SteliaLab), this project led to the development of a generic thermoplastic structure demonstrator, enabling a first internal evaluation of these technologies in an actual industrial context.

Thermoplastic, thanks to its fast implementation and the projections in terms of cost reductions, allows the realisation of composite solutions which are more performing than the current ones, and are more adapted to the strong rates of the future programmes.

Cedric Gautier, STELIA Aerospace CEO, said: "STELIA Aerospace partnered with the main French actors in the field of thermoplastic composites, in order to create a demonstrator which will facilitate the development of these new materials in the coming years, and will once more demonstrate the French excellence in research".

The Arches Box TP project is premiered at Paris International Airshow at Le Bourget, on the STELIA Aerospace booth (booth A254, Hall 2A).

Each year, STELIA Aerospace invests some 25 million euros in R&T.