After a relatively long period of instabilities, the Spanish composite manufacturer Carbures is raising again. This is really good news for the Spanish industry and for all those engineers who are interested in this kind of advanced material.
It’s just been made public that in 2016 Carbures reached their historic record in terms of the production of aircraft components made of composite materials. As a matter of fact, their production has increased 16.2% with respect to 2015, manufacturing a total of 45,695 aircraft parts. Therefore, we can say that Carbures have returned to the place where they belong: being one of the top composite manufacturers for the European aerospace and defence sectors.
For those who don’t know the company, they produce structures for quite a few members of the Airbus fleet. For instance, some of the civil airplanes which use their components are: A320, A320NEO, A330, A340, A350 or even the impressive A380. In addition, they also contribute to the military sector (e.g. A400M). The parts which are manufactured by Carbures include from lids of the oil tanks of the engine to parts of the fuselage.
The increment cited above is believed to increase even more for 2017, due to all the projects in which the company is involved right now. The reason for this is that every day, more and more companies are starting to use composite materials to reduce the weight of the vehicles. Why is this important? Well, having a lightweight structure improves the efficiency of the engine, which means a decrease in the use of fuel (one of the greatest expenses for civil airlines) and a better energetic performance.
Apart from that, Carbures are also producing carbon fibre components for the automotive industry, although not too many day-to-day car companies are currently using this materials because of their cost.
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