Register for the PNW AIAA
April Tech Talk

Thursday, April 15, 2021 via Zoom 
7:00 - 8:00 pm PST

Transport Aircraft Composite Aging 
by 
Patrick Enjuto

Speaker Bio
Patrick Enjuto is an Associate Technical Fellow in Structures at The Boeing Company. He has been elected AIAA Associate Fellow for the Class of 2021. He is an internationally recognized expert in damage tolerance and advanced structural analysis methods for composite aircraft structures. Patrick leads industry-wide safety-standardization of composite damage tolerance and maintenance approaches resulting from the International Industry/Regulatory Working Group activities as Co-Chairman of the Composite Materials Handbook-17 Damage Tolerance Task Group. He has over 20 years of experience in the field of aircraft structures having participated in a wide variety of projects contributing to the design and certification of aircraft from the 4 major manufacturers in the world (Airbus, Boeing, Bombardier and Embraer). He started his career as a Graduate Research Scholar at NASA LaRC.

Talk Abstract
Over the past four decades, the use of composite materials in commercial aircraft structures has been continuously increasing. The reasons for the use of composite structures in commercial airplanes include benefits to passengers and airlines, enhanced airplane performance, as well as design and production advantages. Service experience of composite aircraft structure has generally been very good, with some early experiences associated to specific design or processing details and a combination of environmental effects and mechanical loading considerations. The robust approach to composite structures has resulted in very reliable designs with over 1 billion flight hours (>100,000 years).