An Overview on Designable Adhesion for Aviation Applications

Novel adhesive materials have the potential to enable step changes in transformational aircraft both in the manufacture, operations, and maintenance phases of a vehicle’s life cycle. A variety of barriers, both technological and regulatory, stand in the way of adopting novel adhesive technologies. This paper provides a system level analysis on the impact of adhesive technologies on the Advanced Air Mobility market. Additionally, an overview of state-of-the-art capabilities are discussed for three distinct areas of adhesion: 1) low ice adhesion coatings, 2) strong adhesives for structural bonding, and 3) bio-engineered adhesive technologies. This effort identified the need for more tightly coupling computational and experimental research activities to accelerate adhesive material design.