Quote:
Originally Posted by T@T
1) How much percentage of a fighters fuse is pressurized?
2) A fighter doesn't see near the hours of an airliner.
3) A fighter is inspected top to bottom after every flight
4) Size of a fighter and hours in the air make it less likely to be hit by lightning.
5) Skin thickness on a fighter is about 10 times thicker if you use size percentage.
6) aluminum is much better at dispersing electricity than any composite materials.
7) Agreed, the wing design is wicked!!! 
Edit: Just noticed this part of your post (bolded)
What composite fighters are still going strong? anything with any real age or flight time is made out of mostly aluminum, as far as I know anyway. |
1)Just the cockpit, say 5% of the overall. 2)No, but they are considerably higher stress hours. The Airframe life of a fighter is less than 1/4 of most airliners. 3)Not really. Quick visual but not much more than a passenger plane. If you relate the airframe life of a fighter to an airliner they get a teardown inspection at a similar frequency. 4)
5)Skin thickness compared to overall size is not really worth comparing. The aircraft are built as small as possible to handle the stresses they will face. 6)Lightning protection is put in place on composites, just like a lighting rod on a house with paths to ground.
Additionally, composite fighters are not really 100% composite. The frame is still aluminum, just the skin is composite and only the latest are built that way. Anything built pre 2000 is aluminum. Composite is the way of the future and shouldn't have many issues. Stronger and lighter it should hold up quite nicely. I think the main problem area is bonding/attaching the the aluminum frames, but smarter people than me have been working on this for years.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm..._boeing05.html