Project description
A green alternative to aluminium protective coatings for aircraft
The aerospace industry has adopted aluminium alloys in aircraft parts to meet the demand for high-performance lightweight materials. However, these components fall short of the required corrosion and friction resistance standards, prompting the use of environmentally harmful compounds as a temporary solution. The EU-funded ECOLAND project strives to explore and create an ecologically friendly protective coating for aluminium parts. This innovative solution aims to enhance the coating’s longevity, decrease energy consumption and production time in manufacturing, and ultimately improve cost-effectiveness. By achieving these goals, ECOLAND will provide an alternative that surpasses current options in terms of environmental impact and overall performance.
Objective
The need of using high performance lightweight materials is pushing the aerospace industry to incorporate aluminium alloys in many parts of the aircraft. But all aircraft components, and especially those of landing gears, need to be able to withstand friction and corrosive environments while continuing to operate at optimum levels.
Nowadays most landing gear parts made of aluminium alloys are protected against corrosion by surface anodising and multilayer painting. The treatment is usually carried out on Cr(VI) based compounds. To date, there is not any Cr-free accepted protecting treatment for Al 7000 series alloys that fulfils the aeronautics requirements, so, it is necessary to develop an environmentally and Cr-free acceptable alternative process.
The main objective of ECOLAND project is to face the research of a suitable REACH compliant anaphoretic electrocoating treatment (including both the optimal pretreatment method and anaphoretic electrocoating application conditions) that can replace the currently used anodising + painting treatment for protection of Al 7000 series alloys in aeronautic applications. This anaphoretic electrocoating will allow a reduction of emissions, saving of coat and improvement of corrosion protection.
The following improvements will be aimed from the ECOLAND Cr-free project:
• The lifetime of the anaphoretic electrocoating system shall be 25 % longer than the lifetime of traditional.
• It is expected a minimum of around 30% cost and 45% energy consumption reduction in manufacturing compared to currently available systems.
• Thanks to the new coating systems more complex geometry parts could be coated and so landing gears might be designed lighter than currently ones.
• The production time to be shortened in a 55%.
• A decrease of the risk of mechanical failure due to the reduction of the alloy exposure time to acids.
• VOCs emissions will be reduced in a 50%.
Fields of science
- humanitiesartsvisual arts
- engineering and technologymechanical engineeringvehicle engineeringaerospace engineeringaircraft
- natural scienceschemical sciencesinorganic chemistrypost-transition metals
- engineering and technologymaterials engineeringcoating and films
- engineering and technologymechanical engineeringvehicle engineeringaerospace engineeringaeronautical engineering
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
CS2-IA - Innovation actionCoordinator
20014 San Sebastian
Spain