Weight is a critical factor in the design of vehicles such as aircraft, since the weight of an aircraft directly affects the fuel consumption of the aircraft for any given mission. Therefore, aircraft designers are constantly searching for ways to reduce the weight of current aircraft. The simplest way to reduce weight is, of course, to eliminate some of the least critical, or redundant components on aircraft.
Redundant components are often used to provide an added margin of safety in those situations where failure of the primary components may result in loss of an aircraft or severe injury to the passengers or crew of the aircraft. Therefore attaining weight reduction by eliminating redundant components increases overall risk and is generally undesirable. Elimination of the least critical components, while not necessarily impacting safety, may result in a degradation of performance of the aircraft which is unacceptable.
What is needed is a method of reducing the weight of an aircraft without significantly degrading the performance thereof.