If you were to be asked to write a material(s) report on either -solar panelsor -aircraft fuselageWhich would you choose?well i was asked to choose between these two,so i guess that if i choose what the majority wouldn't, i might just score a little bit higher,what do you think?if you are the lecturer you would want something different right?
Fuselage, solar panels are boring...check out the design considerations for the fuselage of the old SR-7 Blackbird, a really amazing aircraft in its day.
Aircraft fuselage. Right now solar panels are all the rage, and there's lots and lots of nonsense written about them. Aircraft design is old technology, but still quite fascinating. Learn about riveting and gluing techniques, the various aluminum alloys or plastics used, and compare the weight of an airplane fuselage with that of a building of comparable size.
Solar Panels. Solar panels is a generic term for any semiconductor that converts solar energy to electrical energy. However there many different kinds of solar panels and constructed in different ways from different materials. There is the generic polysilicon solar panels for residential installation on one end of the spectrum. On the other end are very high efficiency (and expensive) solar cells used on the Mars Orbiter that are constructed of so called triple junction GaAs/Ge solar cells. In addition there are also the thin film solar cells that are being researched that use Cadmium Telluride (CdTe) to form junctions and make very efficient cells on very thin substrates. I would say that research into materials that can be used for solar cells is one of the hottest research fields right now. (That being said, I really did enjoy Airframe by Micheal Crithon. Whenever I'm in a plane during bad weather I always thing of the engineers that designed the plane... what assumptions did they make... what tradeoffs did they make... )
If you pick the fuselage, look up friction stir welding. It's a low temp, solid state method of joining Al. I have taken a few classes (undergrad and grad) from Dr. Reynolds. This stuff is cool!
