When you want to build a clean, green airplane, the primary thing you want to do is make it
lightweight on the structures side.
This is the James H. Starnes structures and materials laboratory. We've tested aircraft
components in this building since the 1940s.
We test trying to determine how a structure would perform in flight.
What we try to do with a test specimen is we push it, pull it, or twist it until we cause it to break.
We want to get the best load-carrying capability, the strongest structure,
for the least amount of weight.
The biggest challenge for the structures side of a green airplane is getting to these complex,
complicated shapes for the aircraft that we haven't looked at before.
PRSEUS is designed so even if you get a damage at one location or a very severe failure at one location
the cracks will only spread so far.
If you look real close you might be able to see that there's stitching along here. Those stitches go
all the way through this side to this side and that helps hold the layers of structure together.
You've got layers of material that are built up and then you have, here's your skin, and then you
have part that wraps around here, so what you end up with is a rod in the center with wraps
around it and then you have a series of these lined up together.
If you have a crack in the structure in flight the crack will stop, the pilot will know there's severe
damage, and he will be able to land the plane safely.
Now we've got stitching plus the pultruded rods plus all these other things that are coming
together and it's looking closer and closer to the point where we really will be able to apply this
technology to a real airplane someday and 10 or 15 years from now
I hope to be able to see that happen.
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