Aircraft gap seal
AssigneeAirbus Operations GmbH
InventorsJulien Laverne, Philip Jaggard, Matt Harding
Life of this patent
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Abstract
An aircraft assembly including: first and second external skin panels having opposing edge faces separated by a gap, the gap having a width in a first direction extending between the opposing edge faces and a depth in a second direction generally orthogonal to the first direction; and a gap seal arranged in the gap to at least partially fill the gap, wherein the gap seal is formed of a material configured such that compression of the gap seal in the first direction results in substantially no expansion of the gap seal in the second direction.
Claims17
An aircraft assembly comprising:
- first and second external skin panels having opposing edge faces separated by a gap, the gap having a width in a first direction extending between the opposing edge faces and a depth in a second direction generally orthogonal to the first direction,
- a gap seal arranged in the gap to at least partially fill the gap,
- wherein the first and second external skin panels are configured to move relative to one another between a first configuration in which the gap seal is arranged in the gap to at least partially fill the gap and a second configuration in which the gap seal is compressed in the first direction, and
- wherein the gap seal comprises material configured such that compression of the gap seal in the first direction across the width of the gap results in substantially no expansion of the gap seal in the second direction corresponding to a depth of the gap.
An assembly to seal a gap comprising:
- a gap between opposing edges of external skin panels on an aircraft,
- a gap seal in the gap wherein the gap seal has a width commensurate to a width of the gap along a direction parallel to at least one of the external skin panels,
- wherein a material forming the gap seal has a Poisson's ratio of no greater than 0.1, and
- wherein the external skin panels are configured to move relative to one another between a first configuration in which the gap seal is arranged in the gap to at least partially fill the gap and a second configuration in which the gap seal is compresses in the first direction.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.