Aerospace and Aeronautics

The sector demands more efficient and environmentally friendly aircraft that meet strict safety standards. Meanwhile, the aeronautical industry must grapple with ensuring national security in an ever-evolving threat landscape across the physical and digital realms.

Space exploration, which continues to capture our imagination, requires advanced materials and innovations that can endure the rigours and extremes of space travel. One common barrier across all areas is the escalating cost, which must be overcome to thrive in this demanding industry.

Goodfellow, a trusted global supplier of high-quality advanced materials and expert technical advice and services, is the ideal partner to support the constantly evolving aerospace and aeronautical sectors. 

Material testing is a key part of ensuring the right final product performance. Goodfellow offers testing services that can provide part of consulting advice to customers who are still exploring which is the right material for their application.

Goodfellow also offers a range of different wire types, including platinum and niobium, that are available in ultrathin thicknesses. With its in-house expertise in materials, Goodfellow's range includes a specialist niobium-titanium wire that is incredibly strong and temperature resistant with excellent conductivity.

Many of the wires offered are less than 100 microns in diameter – finer than a single strand of human hair – and specialist matrix preparation methods needed to be used to create the wires to the specified dimensions. 

Support rigorous aerospace material development and component manufacturing with specialist capabilities across the Goodfellow group.

Aerospace material qualification — including tensile testing, fatigue testing, corrosion analysis, and microstructure evaluation — is available through our ISO 17025-accredited laboratory, delivering traceable, standards-compliant data to support certification, performance validation, and long-term durability assessment under demanding service conditions.

Precision micro-components for aerospace sensors, fuel injectors, and guidance systems can be manufactured by Goodfellow’s microfabrication division, enabling high-accuracy fabrication of complex geometries and micron-scale features that meet stringent aerospace tolerance and reliability requirements.

Materials used for aerospace applications will often have to withstand extreme environmental conditions and stresses outside the normal range that most materials will experience.

Often, there will be tighter tolerance limits for many aero applications for safety reasons. Thus, any materials used must be of the best quality to ensure that no unexpected behaviors occur due to unwanted defects. 

Recent developments in aerospace include the development of lighter aluminum alloys with less drag and resistance to reduce overall weight and improve fuel efficiency to extend flight distances.

Aluminum alloys are one of the dominant types of materials used in the aerospace sector as a result of their very high strength-to-weight ratio, but more and more composite materials have been replacing aluminum alloys in certain areas of commercial jet airlines, such as the fuselage and wing.

We understand your need for finding novel ways to make aircraft more efficient to reduce the environmental impact of the aerospace industry while also realizing other fuel and power technologies. However, achieving this requires the development of new or improved uses for materials.

We see innovation all the time, with many spacecrafts benefiting from the development of lighter materials, in particular those that are heat resistant and radiation hard. The James Webb Space Telescope used very large areas of Kapton® film, which is radiation resistant and vacuum compatible, and it was used to protect the large telescope and mirrors that form the basis of the observational instruments on board.

With CSR on the industry agenda, we support the aerospace and aeronautical industry to find ways to develop a sustainable supply chain.