The FOURMI Project by RESCOLL: airplane stripping gets fast and eco-friendly

On the occasion of COP21, we publish a series of presentations on R & D projects by RESCOLL on studies conducting solutions environmentally friendly

The FOURMI Project was dedicated to the development of smart coatings with 3 types of innovative functions: monitoring of thermal damage, fire resistance and strippability. This project was co-funded by DGA in the framework of RAPID.

The project aimed to give technical answers to the following stripping issue:

The need for easy and optimized stripping of paints on civil and military aircrafts. Nowadays, paint removal implies high investment costs (dedicated hall), high service costs (aircraft unavailable during stripping) and EHS costs (chemical stripping). The FOURMI Project aimed to develop thermo-strippable coatings and to assess the cost benefits related to this new approach

This issue was addressed in the project with the development of new technologies, designed in compliance with aeronautics standards and specifications provided by end-users.

Starting in end 2012 and ending in October 2015, the FOURMI Project resulted with the demonstration of the efficiency of the FOURMI technologies especially the thermal stripping technology that allows a huge reduction of operational time and avoidance of chemical wastes (no chemical strippers used with the FOURMI stripping technology). The picture below shows the stripping efficiency on civil aircraft paint.

The top coat paint is easily peeled away after thermal treatment and the epoxy primer is revealed with no degradation and can be coated again.

A LCA is now under study in order to highlight the environmental benefits brought by the thermos-strippable coatings and fully compare with standard stripping techniques.

Download : The FOURMI Project