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Project at a Glance:

    The aerospace industry is undergoing a significant push to build lighter, more fuel efficient, aircraft. To fulfill this demand aircraft components are increasingly being made from composite parts. Lightning strike protection is an important consideration due to the inherent dielectric behavior of the composites. Current composite configurations rely on imbedding a conductive metal mesh just below the paint top coat to mitigate lightning strike. Thickness and uniformity of the top coat has a significant impact on lightning strike mitigation. Paint and primer is currently applied to test articles by hand spraying. Robotic/automated systems have been tried in the past, but have not yielded the same reliable uniformity of top coat compared to hand spaying by a skilled technician.

Project Objectives:

    Our team will develop, implement, and test equipment to apply uniform, and reproducible, paint and primer top coats on to aircraft component parts. Implementation of this system will be done at Goodrich Aerostructures R&D labs in Chula Vista, CA. The sponsor will provide test articles to be coated using the equipment designed by the student team. Coated test articles will be evaluated by the sponsor-student team for thickness and uniformity of the coatings, in addition to lightning strike mitigation.