Potential Structural Materials and Design Concepts for Light Airplanes

A greatly expanded sales market for light airplanes and helicopters will be realized only if consumer prices can be reduced sufficiently to accommodate mass financial capability. Although manufacturing practices have minimized costs as much as possible, the wide disparity in the material/labor cost ratio must be narrowed considerably. A reduction of as much as 48% in customer cost is possible if newer materials and processes are introduced and if automotive mass production methods are used. This paper reports a cost and performance study of aircraft using present methods and materials as compared with others, already developed or being developed.