Boats vs Planes

[southernrower]

Boeing halts production to Dreamliner due to delamination issues. Interesting. Should we start the prepeg vs wet lay up debate??

[AaronDoucett]

Start? I thought caustic was waging that war for a while now

I would like to see a chart of which manufacturers / models use which process however, if someone feels like investigating that.

[caustic]

Hmm. The article about the issue is maddeningly deficient on details. all they say is that it may be related to shimming between parts. that could cover anything from improperly installing the shims, to the additional shims putting different stress on the parts in question, or something else.

[Scott @ Noble Hardware]

Yeah, I agree the articles didn't exactly spell out the problems. Hard to really understand what is happening.

From "shimming" and "delaminating" I'm guessing they're taking about liquid-shims. On aircraft structures you can use structural adhesive to fill gaps between panels. This "wet shim" usually is bonded to one side of the joint but not the other - so it fills the gap but doesn't make a structural connection. If the preparation is done incorrectly, then the shims might break away from the bonded side.

That's my 2-second guess, anyway.