Grant: Alliance Grants

Aircraft seals are commonly used to fill the space and gap between the components of an aircraft to provide noise reduction and vibration damping (and more importantly aerodynamic sealing) of moving parts of the wing and empennage. Due to the frequent interaction of the implemented seals with hard and erosive components of the aircraft, the lifetime of the employed seals is limited by the material properties of the employed material (e.g., compressive strength, fatigue life, friction, and wear). Therefore, a comprehensive analysis of the performance of these seals is necessary to ensure the efficiency and durability of the aircraft seal configurations. The proposed research project will focus on a multistep approach which comprises (i) the definition and design of the seals and their performance requirements, (ii) the main failure mechanisms of the seals during operation, (iii) the characterization and evaluation of the structural, mechanical, and tribological performance of the seals, (iv) the development of a finite element model (FEM) to predict the performance (i.e. deflection, particularly large deflections, friction, and wear) and design parameters, and finally (v) a scale-up analysis of the research results to validate the FEM results. The results of the proposed research program will help the industry partners to envision the new design for the modern aircraft and predict the performance of the seals used on aircraft particularly when sealing the moving components of their aircraft such as control surfaces.