Anyone who has experienced turbulence aboard an airplane has likely looked out the window, wondering how the aircraft stays intact through the sometimes bone-rattling bumps.
Tucked on a 15-acre complex in Anaheim’s industrial district is a company that helps to keep myriad plane parts from coming unglued.
Solvay, a Brussels-based business, and a team of 400 employees in Anaheim stress test materials, adhesives and coatings on clips and brackets that hold the outer skin of commercial jets, private planes and helicopters together.
The company’s history extends back to the space race of the 1960s, and today its products and expertise are a part of the next race for the skies with promises of flying taxis and regular trips to the moon.
Lisa Walton, the company’s market segment manager, says the materials made by Solvay are used on parts like airplane wing flaps and tips, around aircraft windows and on rotorcraft panels “that get a lot of use and abuse.”
Solvay also makes thermoplastic composites, which are used for aerospace applications, while its adhesives, aircraft film and specialty polymers are used on fixed-wing aircraft, rotorcraft, aircraft propulsion systems and space launches.
The materials, she says, are key to the integrity of an aircraft.
Before the pilot ever sits in the cockpit — even before the manufacturer gets to work on molding the wings, fuselage and engine — Solvay’s team runs durability and performance tests to find the right composites, adhesives and other materials that can withstand the stresses of air travel.
Lightweight and tough, thermoplastic composites soften when heated and can be molded into whatever shape is needed. When they cool, they retain their shape and are extremely strong.
“The materials are anywhere from 12 inches wide to 60 inches wide, and they’re only 0.005 inches thick — like pieces of paper,” Walton said. “They are stacked up and put into an autoclave where the pressure consolidates them into one uniform panel.”
The panels are then pushed, pulled, pressure-tested and stretched to determine their tensile strength. In other tests, weights are dropped on the materials to determine their durability.
“They also need to pass smoke and toxicity tests,” Walton said. “That measures what types of gases the materials put out.”
Industry data suggests Solvay’s research and testing have helped contribute to safer airplanes.
A 2022 global safety report from the International Civil Aviation Organization shows that in 2021 the aviation industry saw a 9.8% decrease in accidents compared with 2020, while fatalities resulting from aircraft accidents dropped by 66%.
The numbers have fallen despite an 11% increase in total scheduled flights. The ICAO attributes this to safety commitments shared across the industry.
Aviation history
Solvay has been stress-testing airplane materials since the 1980s, but the company’s expertise in material durability goes back farther than that.
“Solvay materials were onboard the Apollo 11 mission that sent humans to the moon for the first time (in 1969),” said Dan Eskelsen, product portfolio manager in Solvay’s materials business unit.
Solvay was one of the first companies qualified to supply thermoplastic composite materials to the aerospace industry in the 1990s, and that technology is now being used for automotive and oil and gas applications as well, he said.
NASA and Solvay partner Northrop Grumman recently toasted the Nov. 16 launch of Artemis I from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The mega-rocket, which embarked on a 25-day journey around the moon, was equipped with Solvay materials in its solid-rocket motor nozzles.
Artemis I was the first in a series of increasingly complex missions to build a long-term human presence on the moon.
In the coming years, Solvay says its products will be inside flying taxis, the next generation of fighter jets and future Artemis missions to the moon.
“We are thrilled to continue providing customers with material solutions to overcome the most challenging environments the space industry experiences today and will experience in future missions,” Eskelsen said.