By Andrey Slivka
To the typical airline passenger, aeronautics technology is a highly complex system that produces a near miracle: human flight.
What that passenger probably doesn’t think about is the importance of technology that’s literally on the surface of a plane but tends to go unnoticed — aeronautics coatings. A plane’s coatings can make all the difference in the sky, affecting everything from efficiency to safety to speed.
Here’s a rundown of three state-of-the-art aerospace coatings, and a word on what makes each so crucial.
Sealants: A Crucial Shield
Just like its passengers, an aircraft itself needs protection from the elements. Fuselage corrosion costs the aviation industry billions of dollars each year — and can have serious safety consequences.
Inspections are key to preventing corrosion, but so are good sealants. The latter resist water, keep incompatible metals away from each other (thus preventing “galvanic corrosion”) and protect against caustic substances, such as components in jet fuel, that are common in aviation.
The most effective sealants, such as PPG’s PR-2870 product, are also chrome-free.
“Chrome is a very good corrosion inhibitor,” but it is “bad for the environment and bad for people,” said Barry Gillespie, vice president, Aerospace Products, at PPG.
His division’s goal in developing its current sealant was to remove the chrome from a previous version of the product, and to make sure that the new version beat its predecessor in how well it adhered to surfaces and protected against corrosive fluids.
“Most importantly, what we wanted to do was to try to make it lighter,” Gillespie said, noting, “There’s probably approaching 500 pounds in sealants on a narrow-body airplane.”
PR-2870 meets the lightness challenge, weighing up to 30 percent less than a comparable sealant.
Paints: Not All White Anymore
Airplanes have historically been painted white for a reason. A white livery, or paint job, kept a plane cooler. A plane, Gillespie said, can “pick up more than 25 degrees in temperature” when flying at altitude. That jump in temperature not only will make an aircraft uncomfortable inside, but also can cause other problems.
“The environmental control system and the auxiliary power unit and the engines have to work harder to air-condition — to keep that heat out,” Gillespie said. Doing so can increase costs. That’s why — until recently — airlines rarely painted their planes in dark colors.
New technology from PPG has made it possible for airlines to create striking, dark-toned liveries and significantly reduce costs.
The PPG technology causes the pigment in the paint to become transparent for “red light,” or hot light. The technology involves putting a reflective base layer under a dark pigment layer — heat penetrates the outer layer before bouncing off the bottom layer. PPG’s darker paints are also low in harmful volatile organic compounds, and thus better for the environment.
Ice-Release Coatings: Slippery And Safe
One of PPG’s goals, according to Gillespie, is “to make the airplane as slippery as possible.”
A slippery plane, of the sort that PPG’s ice-release coatings create, allows ice and other objects, such as insect carcasses, to simply slide off. Slipperiness improves aerodynamics by reducing surface tension, makes a plane look better and cuts down on cleaning and de-icing costs. It can even stave off disaster, given that ice — which is more apt to form when freezing water clings to dead insects or other debris — is a significant factor in airline accidents. (When ice forms on a plane’s wings and tail, it can interfere with lift ability and lead to “aerodynamic stall.”)
What’s next on the aerospace R&D horizon?
PPG is working on coatings and sealants that Gillespie terms “UV cure on demand.”
Most sealants can take anywhere from six hours to as long as 24 to 48 hours to cure. But PPG’s new sealants act similarly to products a dentist might use, according to Gillespie.
“You put the sealant on, you get it the way you want it, and then you hit it with UV light,” he said. “Seconds later, it’s completely cured and they can move on with the next process.” The time savings also simplifies the complex logistics behind hangar work and allows planes to return to service faster.
PPG is also working to further elaborate the “data-driven airplane,” an aircraft enabled with hundreds of thousands of sensors that promote, among other things, predictive maintenance. Like PPG’s sealants, dark paints and ice-release coatings, these solutions are testaments to technology’s ability to make daily life safer, more efficient and more beautiful, often in the most unobtrusive ways.
Andrey Slivka is deputy editor at Forbes BrandVoice.
