Consortium Seeks Aircraft Composite Repair, Sustainability Benefits

A collaborative research initiative in Europe is seeking to use digital twin processes to manage the entire life-cycle of next-generation aircraft composite structures. The project aims to provide better insight into component manufacturing, history and repairs, and to improve sustainability practices in the aftermarket.

Launched in September 2022, the GENEX project is being led by a consortium of 16 aerospace companies and research organizations in Europe. The consortium is developing a variety of digital twins across the aircraft life span, including:  a manufacturing process digital twin; a product usage digital twin; MRO digital twins for the composite repair process; and a cognitive digital twin, which will entail managing data from all systems and tools to gain knowledge from the overall composite component life-cycle.

Once complete in February 2026, the GENEX project aims to have developed several tools and systems to enable this life-cycle monitoring. The checklist includes advanced physical and data-driven simulations of the composite manufacturing and repair processes; process monitoring systems to measure manufacturing quality; sensors for structural health and usage monitoring; computational modeling for component damage; and digital tools and methods to improve maintenance and repair processes.

“The main goal is to utilize all the processes to have a history of the component,” says Andrea Calvo-Echenique, GENEX project coordinator and research and development engineer at ITAINNOVA, a technological institute in Spain. For instance, the digital twins will enable users to see how a component was manufactured and whether defects occurred during manufacturing that could generate future problems, enabling OEMs to digitally shape the manufacturing processes to avoid this kind of damage.

Once a composite part is in service, an aircraft operator and its MRO partners can keep tabs on it to monitor whether defects—such as delamination—are progressing and to evaluate how much time it can stay in use before needing a repair. “We can plan and reduce maintenance costs, switching from this periodic maintenance framework to a more predictive one,” says Calvo-Echenique. “By the digitalization of the repair processes, we aim to reduce times and costs, and increase quality, mostly by creating these digital twins of the processes.”

Companies such as composite repair specialist GMI Aero and engineering services provider Ziegler Aerospace are providing MRO expertise to the GENEX project.

“We’re going to evaluate the impact to MROs and, at the same time, how the deliverables will help support [us] in terms of damage detection, visual inspection and composite repairs,” says Ziegler Aerospace CEO Naresh Solipur. He adds that Ziegler is developing a new technology to detect damage to composite parts, as well as contamination from substances such as water or grease, which would need to be removed before a repair could take place.

Solipur highlights two potential scenarios in which the technology being developed by GENEX could be used to improve MRO operations. In the first, sensor data on an aircraft coming in for a maintenance check could be used to determine whether composite parts are damaged, whether an immediate repair is required or whether the part has remaining useful life.

“The visual inspection is a very complex process because the human interface is there, and with the naked eye we cannot detect all sorts of damage,” says Solipur, adding that this sensor data would be given to a maintenance provider to help make decisions. In a second scenario, sensor data could augment non-destructive testing data to help an MRO provider make repair decisions.

Aside from maintenance efficiencies, Calvo-Echenique says the GENEX project will also improve sustainability. It is using a composite material that has mechanical properties of thermosets—which are required for the aviation industry—as well as the recyclability benefits of thermoplastics. This means the composite resin is fully recyclable and can be repaired by applying pressure and heat. She adds that avoiding replacement of parts with remaining useful life by leveraging sensor data will also provide environmental benefits.