[lazyier]

Why do you suppose there are gaps in the first place?

Why don't they make it one solid piece? You can do that with composite construction. Just overlap layers and glue it all together.

It could have something to do with how the fuselage change shapes and distorts under different conditions. The airplane goes through various different shapes depending on things like pressurization and thermal expansion. The body gets a bit bigger, the wings flap up and down, things get wider and shorter and harder, etc. etc.

With composite construction things are glued into place, but they need to be designed to accommodate this movement. The glues and such things have a particular amount of elasticity and fatigue limits.

Could be that a 0.005 amounts to 10% less gluing surface and thus the projected fatigue life of the glue is now much different because there is much less.

Just speculating.

[bluGill]

Expansion with temperature changes over the length of a plane is surprising large. They put in gaps along the lenght to take this up so the whole is to size

[assttoasstmgr]

> Why do you suppose there are gaps in the first place?

> Why don't they make it one solid piece? You can do that with composite construction. Just overlap layers and glue it all together.

Are you suggesting they build the entire fuselage as one piece and "glue it all together"? It's an airplane fuselage, not a MacBook chassis.

[throwaway0a5e]

>Are you suggesting they build the entire fuselage as one piece and "glue it all together"?

That's basically how they build ships. The glue is just a little hotter.

It seems doable but QC would probably be a nightmare and it wouldn't be very repairable adding up to it not being an economically sane choice.

Edit: Since apparently this has to be said, they weld ships together creating what is in effect one single piece assembly. The point is that while the techniques for joining fibrous materials are very different, large single piece structures that flex and bow are fairly well understood and there's no reason you couldn't create one out of carbon fiber if doing so penciled out.

[hedgehog]

IIRC a major rationale behind the 787 design is to allow sections to be manufactured complete with wiring harness etc in different locations and then shipped for final assembly. You can build really big parts (check out Janicki) but for this application probably not desirable.

[monocasa]

They definitely stich sections of hull together to make all but the smallest ships.

[throwaway09223]

Their point is that the hull sections are welded, becoming one single solid piece. Ship hulls do not have gaps.