The Phase 2 course is designed as a direct follow-on to our Phase 1 course for repair technicians, mechanics, supervisors, and quality assurance personnel directly involved in providing high performance repairs to advanced composite structures.

The Phase 1 course is required as a prerequisite for all students wishing to progress into our Phase 2 repair course.

This class is devoted to hands-on repair practice. Less time is spent in the classroom and more time is spent in the workshop. Students will be given a variety of damaged parts and structures to perform repairs.

Determining the extent of the damage, evaluating the ply orientation and lay-up of an unknown structure, and removing internal contamination (such as water, fuel, etc.) are fundamental parts of this course.

Each student-team will be accessing damage to the composite structure, determining a repair approach, and undertaking the repairs. Three different parts will be repaired by each team of participants, with different materials and challenges within each repair scenario.

Programming “hot-bonders” to carry out these repairs is an integral part of this course as well. Our facility has many different types of “hot-bonders” to work with. The advantages of each will become familiar to the students as they have the opportunity to work with several of them individually throughout the week. Vacuum bagging of complex shapes is another challenge presented to students, especially with the heat blanket and thermocouple placement to contend with within the bag against the repair. Many different bag schedules and breather scenarios will be explored to facilitate the repairs.