Thermoplastic Composites Reshape Aerospace Manufacturing Speed

The composite materials revolution in modern aerospace is largely attributable to thermosetting materials. Carbon fibers pre-impregnated with resin are laid up by hand or by robots and cured under heat and pressure in an autoclave for several hours. This manufacturing method enables aircraft such as the Boeing 787 and the Airbus A350 to achieve structures that are nearly 20% to 30% lighter than their aluminum equivalents, resulting in significantly higher fuel efficiency.

However, this has also created a manufacturing bottleneck.

Autoclave processing is costly, capital-intensive, and imposes hard limits on production speed. More importantly, thermoset components cannot be welded, reshaped, or recycled without significant energy input and material loss. As sustainability regulations tighten, the end-of-life fate of thermoset composites—primarily landfilling or incineration—has also become a procurement concern.

This is why thermoplastic composites (TPC) are once again gaining industrial attention. Unlike thermoset plastics, thermoplastic systems can be welded, processed in minutes rather than hours, and integrated into highly automated production lines. Today, the Boeing 787 uses approximately 150 thermoplastic shear webs to reinforce its fuselage frames, while the Airbus A350 XWB employs around 8,000 TPC clips and brackets. The 787 goes even further, incorporating 10,000 to 15,000 thermoplastic clips and clamps per aircraft.

As aerospace and defense manufacturers prepare for the next generation of lightweight, high-performance aircraft, thermoplastic composites are transitioning from demonstration programs to production plans. The question is—to what extent can their adoption extend to future aircraft structures?

From Niche Components to Structural Applications

Although thermoplastic composites (TPCs) have only recently become a major focus in the aerospace manufacturing industry, their journey began more than forty years ago. Their earliest applications can be traced back to the U.S. military’s F-22 fighter jet, where TPCs were used for landing gear and weapon bay doors in the 1980s, followed by the outer wing rear-edge skin panels (fairings) of the Fokker 50 airliner in the 1990s.

However, their adoption has remained gradual. Due to limited processing capabilities, certification challenges, and the aerospace industry’s reliance on proven thermoset composites, thermoplastic composites (TPCs) were largely confined to secondary structures for many years. As material systems, manufacturing technologies, and design confidence have advanced, their role has expanded beyond non-critical components.

Today, thermoplastic composites (TPCs) are used in a wide range of aircraft components, including clips, brackets, fixed wings and J-nose leading edges, fuselage panels, profiles and supports, ribs, control surface assemblies, seat backs, window panels, and cockpit floors. Among these, clips and brackets remain the largest application segment, typically manufactured using carbon fiber reinforced with PPS or PEEK resins. This steady progression from secondary parts to an increasing number of structural applications reflects the growing maturity of thermoplastic composites in modern aerospace projects.

Production speed requirements for using thermoplastics

Commercial aviation is entering one of its largest production ramp-ups in decades. The global aircraft backlog currently exceeds 17,000 units, while defense programs continue to advance next-generation aircraft, unmanned systems, and advanced air mobility platforms. Together, these trends are increasing pressure on manufacturers to deliver lighter, more complex aircraft at production rates that are difficult to support economically with traditional autoclave-based composite manufacturing.

The scale of this challenge is evident in current industrial throughput targets. Airbus is moving toward producing 75 A320 family aircraft per month by 2027, while Boeing aims to produce 70 Boeing 737 MAX aircraft per month. Combined, these rates amount to nearly 1,750 narrow-body aircraft annually.

However, due to differences in fleet size, the distribution among wide-body, regional jet, and turboprop aircraft remains heavily skewed. According to production data from May 2026, manufacturers delivered 98 narrow-body aircraft, compared with only 20 wide-body aircraft. In other words, the assembly rate for narrow-body aircraft was nearly five times that of wide-body output. Regional jets and turboprops accounted for an even smaller share, with just four aircraft produced in each category during the month.

With the backlog amounting to nearly ten times the annual production, industry experts estimate that it would take more than 12 years to clear it at the current manufacturing scale.

Airbus’s Multi-Functional Fuselage Demonstrator (MFFD) perhaps provides the strongest evidence that productivity—not just weight reduction—is driving the adoption of thermoplastics. The carbon fiber-reinforced thermoplastic fuselage demonstrator, built under the Clean Sky 2 program, combines robotic ultrasonic welding with rivet-free assembly methods, aiming to save more than 10% in structural weight while supporting a production rate of approximately 100 fuselage sections per month—a figure consistent with the volume required for future single-aisle aircraft programs.

This production bottleneck highlights the limitations of traditional thermoset composites. Thermoplastic composites (TPCs) offer a fundamentally different manufacturing pathway. High-performance polymers such as carbon fiber-reinforced PEEK (polyether ether ketone) or PEKK (polyether ketone ketone) soften upon heating and solidify upon cooling, enabling rapid processing, welding, and automated manufacturing, as opposed to undergoing permanent cross-linking during curing. Consequently, manufacturing cycle times can be reduced by 80% compared to traditional materials.

For the aerospace and defense industry, which is preparing for future monthly production rates exceeding 100 aircraft, manufacturing efficiency is becoming as critical as mechanical performance. In this context, thermoplastic composites are emerging not only as an alternative material system but also as a key enabler of high-rate aircraft production.

Why Carbon Fiber Is Driving the Adoption of Thermoplastics

Among various thermoplastic composite systems, carbon fiber-reinforced thermoplastics (CFRTP) have become the material system of choice for aerospace and defense applications, combining the high specific strength and stiffness of carbon fibers with the manufacturing advantages of thermoplastic matrices. High-performance resins, such as polyphenylene sulfide (PPS), polyether ether ketone (PEEK), polyether ketone ketone (PEKK), and polyetherimide (PEI), are processed with carbon, glass, or aramid fibers into laminates, unidirectional tapes, and fabric prepregs. While glass fiber continues to be used in cost-sensitive interior and secondary applications, the superior stiffness-to-weight ratio of carbon fiber makes it the preferred reinforcement for weight-critical aircraft structures.

The preference for CFRTP is evident in both commercial and military platforms. The Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II, the most widely operated fifth-generation fighter jet in the world, contains approximately 35% composites by weight, integrating advanced structural thermoplastics, nanocomposites, and carbon fiber-reinforced polymers (CFRP) into its skin, fuselage structure, flight control surfaces, and wingtip fairings.

Commercial aircraft are following the same trend. Both the Airbus A380 and the Boeing 787 incorporate approximately 35 metric tons of carbon composite materials, while the Airbus A350 XWB increases this figure to around 65 metric tons, highlighting the aerospace industry’s growing reliance on carbon fiber composite structures for next-generation aircraft.

Benefits, Bottlenecks, and Beyond

TPC combines excellent weight reduction with a high strength-to-weight ratio, high tensile and compressive strength, a low coefficient of thermal expansion, and superior fatigue resistance. However, these performance advantages come at a premium. The cost of TPC parts is typically at least twice that of equivalent metal parts, posing significant cost implications for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and tier suppliers.

Although glass fiber offers a more economical alternative, it falls short of carbon fiber in terms of mechanical properties. Consequently, carbon fiber accounts for over 90% of thermoplastic composite applications in the aerospace and defense sectors, where structural performance outweighs cost considerations, while glass fiber remains largely confined to secondary and non-critical structures.

Despite the advantages of thermoplastic composites (TPCs), they present their own manufacturing challenges. The high viscosity of molten thermoplastic resins makes it difficult to fully impregnate continuous carbon fiber bundles, potentially leading to voids, dry spots, and poor fiber-matrix adhesion, thereby compromising mechanical properties. These same challenges extend to large-scale 3D printing with continuous carbon fiber reinforcement, where achieving consistent impregnation and interfacial bonding continues to limit broader adoption.

The industry is steadily addressing these challenges. Companies such as Hexcel, Stratasys, and Markforged have developed solutions through in-situ consolidation, heated compaction rollers, improved nozzle designs, and related process innovations. However, in the aerospace sector, this challenge has been largely overcome by using pre-impregnated unidirectional (UD) tapes manufactured under strictly controlled conditions in automated fiber placement (AFP) and automated tape laying (ATL) processes.

Beyond technical barriers, industry conservatism continues to slow adoption. Thermoset composites themselves took three to four decades to become mainstream in aerospace, and thermoplastic composites (TPCs) are following a similar gradual path toward broader acceptance.

Currently, the global aerospace and defense thermoplastic composites market is valued at approximately $554 million in 2025.Despite its strong growth trajectory, TPC still accounts for only a small fraction of overall composite consumption in the aerospace and defense sector, representing just 2% of total composite usage. Furthermore, the aerospace and defense composites market itself constitutes less than 1% of the global composites market.

Positioning for the next phase of aerospace and defense manufacturing

The aerospace and defense industries are entering an era in which manufacturing capability is as critical as material performance. Growing aircraft backlogs, ambitious production targets, sustainability commitments, and defense modernization initiatives are collectively reshaping how future aircraft are designed and manufactured. Materials that enable faster production, greater automation, and improved end-of-life management are no longer optional; they have become strategic enablers.

TPCs are closely aligned with these evolving requirements. Their weldability, repairability, recyclability, and compatibility with automated manufacturing offer advantages that go far beyond weight reduction.

Although technical challenges such as material costs, impregnation, and certification persist, continued investment in welded fuselage structures, automated manufacturing technologies, and next-generation aircraft programs indicates that the industry is transitioning from technology validation to industrial implementation.

The pace of adoption may remain incremental rather than disruptive, reflecting the aerospace industry’s risk-averse approach to introducing new materials into safety-critical structures. Nevertheless, the direction is becoming increasingly clear.

Stratview Research predicts that the global aerospace and defense thermoplastic composites market will grow from $554 million in 2025 to over $930 million by 2032, at a compound annual growth rate exceeding 8%. Although still a relatively small segment within the broader composites industry, this trajectory reflects growing confidence in the increasingly important role thermoplastic composites (TPC) will play in next-generation aircraft manufacturing.