CENTERS OF EXCELLENCE FOR COMPOSITES IN AEROSPACE

Centres of excellence for composites in
aerospace can be divided into:

• Material suppliers.
  
• Part manufacturers.
  
• Aircraft manufacturers.
  
• National research centres.
  
• Universities.
  

With respect to material suppliers, there have
been an extensive consolidation of the industry in recent years. Toray and Tenax /
Toho should be mentioned as carbon fibre manufacturers, whilst Hexcel and Cytec
Fiberite are the biggest producers of prepregs. However, several other companies  
are well established with their own individual products.Independent part manufacturers include, for example, Fischer FACC (Austria),Composite Aquitaine (France), MAN(Germany), Fokker Special Products (The Netherlands), Sonaca (Belgium) and Gamesa (Spain). These organisations all run their own development projects and have specific expertise and fields of
application.The largest aircraft manufacturers with competence in composite development and
manufacturing are EADS (Airbus, Military Aircraft, Eurocopter, Astrium), Dassault (France), SAAB (Sweden), Alenia, Agusta Westland, Pilatus and Diamond Aircraft (Austria).