What’s Eating Your Aeroplane?
Human beings are the great engineers of the universe. We take what nature creates and change it to suit our purposes. We reshape it, heat it, bend it, paint it; convert it into something that will perform a desired function. Then mother nature does her best reclaim that material; relentlessly trying to revert it back to a more natural state, forcing the great engineers to find ways to stave off the inevitable destruction of their creation.
We call it insidious, but nevertheless it is natural. We’re talking about corrosion.
To make matters more dire, the aeroplane doesn’t even have to do anything for corrosion to occur, in fact, aircraft that sit around doing not a lot can even be more susceptible to corrosion than those that are used more often. It’s time-related, not activity-related, and as most of Australia’s GA fleet is now made of old metal, the process of corrosion is very mature in many cases.
Now comes the kicker: corrosion starts in the invisible world below the skin or the paint, and most often makes itself known only when it has developed enough to break through to the surface. That means a smooth, shiny aircraft fuselage or wing surface is no actual indicator of whether or not the structure beneath has been the victim of corrosive attack.
It’s enough to make you start wondering.
Assault and battery
Metal aircraft bear the brunt of corrosive assault. Most components in
