Affordable Composite Fan Case with Damage Tolerant Braided Fiber Architecture

A&P Technology, Inc.

Cincinnati, OH

A cost effective manufacturing approach to fabricate damage tolerant composite fan case designs enables greater than 30% weight reduction in the largest structure within a high bypass aircraft engine

• Demonstrated that composite structures using the braided composite architecture have toughness superior to the baseline aluminum structure
• Demonstrated a new low cost composite manufacturing technique for fabrication of braided composite fan cases

• A&P Technology is partnered with three US engine manufacturers for application of technology to product lines
• Braided composite fan cases enable weight savings up to 400 lbs./engine (800 lbs./aircraft) yielding significant reductions in weight and fuel consumption
• Braided composites produced on A&P Technology's 800 carrier machine (the world's largest braiding machine) are to be used in GE's GEnx engine fan case structure
• Advanced manufacturing approach contributed to the Turning Goals Into Reality (TGIR) award for the Jet Engine Containment Concepts and Blade-Out Simulation Team
• Collaboration and inkind contributions among large and small businesses, government, and universities (Ohio State University and University of Akron) enabled development and delivery of production capable engine hardware and fabrication tooling

• Due to strong interest by the NASA Aviation Safety and Security Program, a $260K Phase III is being funded to explore further improvements in the design of composite sandwich structures
• Computational methods developed by NASA have been validated through testing and analysis of realistic fan case structures supplied by the SBIR effort

Return to NASA SBIR Success Listings