The ultimate Airfix — glue set to be nuts and bolts of ‘real’ aircraft

Airplanes and other big machines may swap nuts and bolts for glue if research at the University of Limerick succeeds in coming up with new technologies to join parts.

The research programme has received €1.35m funding through the Science Foundation Ireland Investigators Programme.

Principal investigator, Dr Conor McCarthy said: “Nuts and bolts have been used for centuries to join safety-critical structures together. However, bolts require holes to be drilled in the assembled parts and this leads to a drastic reduction in their ability to withstand the forces of nature and impacts from everyday use.”