Executives in the aerospace and defense sector are expecting 2016 to be a good year with around 3% revenue growth. While this is hardly suggests a boom, it is much better than what is seen in this industry for a few years and should provide the confidence for the aerospace industry to fund projects in smart materials in general and smart structures in particular.
In addition to the good news about the underlying addressable market for smart aerospace structures, growing role in the aerospace industry for this kind of intelligence. This is encouraged by the focus on comfort and safety in the latest generations of airliners and executive jets as well as in the need for constant monitoring and reconfiguration on unmanned vehicles.

The analysis sees it a number of factors will continue to shape this market with a few being pre-eminent. In particular, it can be taken that entirely different growth scenarios for smart structures will emerge depending on whether or not the skepticism that now exists in some segments of the aerospace industry can be dispelled. Evolution of Smart Structures in the Aerospace Industry Sector Market Opportunities for Smart Structures Technologies Required Uncertainties Commercial and general aviation Adding comfort (noise and vibration control) in next- generation airliners and executive jets. Also enhanced security with better SHM SHM but moving to more highly smart skins in next generation aircraft Because of low-cost fuel strong grow this expected, but no-one knows how long the low-cost fuel regime will last. Also uncertainty about future supersonic aircraft – a big potential user of smart structures Military aircraft Military budgets are growing and new technologies are being trialed translating to new composites and hence new demand for specialist composite monitoring using smart structures. Also, this sector has considerable appetite for the latest smart technologies. All leading edge “smart” technologies, sensors and materials considered. The usual uncertainties around military budgets, as well as geopolitical budgets Smart structures play a growing role in the aerospace industry in four different areas: monitoring of composites, suppression of structural vibration, noise suppression, and surface morphing.

A related area is the use of photovoltaic in aircraft of various types. The observation identifies where the commercial opportunities are for smart structures in civil and general aviation, military aircraft, helicopters, UAVs and spacecraft. It examines where the money will be made in smart structures for aircraft at all levels of the value chain; examine the market potential for the smart structures themselves, the related smart materials and SHM/HUMS systems and smart aircraft skins, as well as the implications of the trend towards smart structures for the aircraft builders and airlines. It can be seen that both the R&D and commercialization projects for smart structures in the aerospace industry, including those sponsored by governmental agencies such as the EU, DARPA and NASA and those run by the major aerospace companies.

Smart structures are enabling the aerospace industry to move away from manual monitoring and repair procedures and the ways that firms in the smart structure space are overcoming the strong reluctance of aerospace industry to abandon manual processes for aircraft maintenance. In particular, analysis is about how smart technologies can monitor the operation of the aircraft, improve its functioning, reducing its maintenance, and extend its life cycle. In addition, granular ten-year forecasts for the smart materials, components and subsystems used for smart structure deployment in the aerospace industry. In addition, detailed profiles of key companies in the aerospace smart structures space analyzing their product/market strategies they have devised for this market have been provided.