Growth through technology

A look at industrial history will tell us of the RB211-22B high bypass turbofan engine, the development of which in 1970 very nearly bankrupted both Rolls-Royce and Lockheed, its launch customer for the engine on the L1011 TriStar. Instead, it drove Rolls-Royce down the road of developing the technology for titanium wide chord fan blades - a major feature of its Trent series of engines and which has subsequently put the company in such a good position with the F-35 lift fan.

The high stiffness carbon fibre material used in this early attempt at wide chord blades was Hyfil, developed within the Royal Aeronautical Establishment at Farnborough in the late 1960s and which turned out to have a fatal susceptibility to high speed chickens. The Achilles heel of high strength composites was, and still is, this damage tolerance and its variability accumulated through a sequence of complex manufacturing process steps.

The choice of partner in its newest joint venture into composite fan blade production was very critical to Rolls-Royce and this is where the GKN Aerospace approach to technology, as well as its pool of capability in composites engineering were deciding factors. Engines currently account for about a third of GKN's aerospace business, but the company intends to increase this to around 50:50 with aerostructures.

GKN has spent the last ten years quietly building a strong technology portfolio and is now at a point where primes are coming to it for technology solutions. It's not just in the private sector that this positioning is evident: GKN is the first non-prime company to receive repayable launch aid from the UK Government to support its £170 million investment in the A350 XWB programme. This looks like a new lease of life for a company that is a few years older than the United States of America!

In tracking GKN's technology growth, it's clear that benefits have accrued from the acquisition of the Airbus Filton manufacturing operation in 2008, but also its strong focus on internal capability development as a route to differentiation and becoming the partner of choice for primes on new and evolving programmes. It was no accident therefore that it was with GKN that Rolls-Royce formed a joint venture to develop composite fan blade technology two years ago.

Funding was announced in February this year for the Environmental Lightweight Fan (ELF) project, with £14.8 million of investment split 50:50 by the Rolls-Royce/GKN joint venture and the South East England Development Agency. Technical details of the developments here have been kept under wraps, but it's clear that the investment in technology is rooted in a sound commercial basis. GKN figures give an eventual predicted annual revenue stream of some £100 million in this area.

The GE90 and GEnX composite fan blades achieve their required performance by the lamination of hundreds of layers of pre-impregnated fibres laid down individually by hand. The intention of Rolls-Royce and GKN appears to leapfrog this manually-intensive production method by developing much more automated processes capable of higher production rates and greater manufacturing consistency, and GKN's capability in automated fibre placement is part of this portfolio of technologies. The task is in the stage of prototype production development, so it will be a couple of years before we see the outcome of this in blade development and a move to a more mature production capability.

There is a production rate dependency that runs through both the engineering and financial numbers. GKN is looking at fan blades for a range of aero engine products and some processes are going to be more suitable for some cases than others. The final mix of process steps has yet to be decided but they are already extrapolating this capability into open rotors, the un-ducted fans for which the proof of concept work was done with flying testbeds in the 1990s and which is still on the horizon for future high efficiency single aisle products.

Composite materials figure prominently in the GKN technology roadmap and automation appears to be the key to making the composite fan blade capability pay. Automated elements of some ten different manufacturing processes within the current iteration of fan blade manufacturing capability have been identified and although the engineering work within the ELF project still has some years left to run, the company is already seeing spinoff benefits in other aspects of its composite production processes.

Structural technology of the future

Other exciting parts of this developing technology portfolio are the advanced fibre placement for A350 components which will go forward into the Next Generation Single Aisle requirement, a specialisation in winglets which began with the A380 and are seeing a healthy business stream beyond this. Electrothermal icing protection structures that GKN has produced with Ultra Electronics for the B787 characterises another key business area in its multi-functional technologies.

GKN is a founding member of the recently formed UK National Composites Centre and there is an intention of embedding a technology team within this. Its recent success in leading the winning consortium in the Technology Strategy Board's £10 million, 12 month, composites Grand Challenge to develop more cost-effective production techniques is part of this intent.

Like many advanced engineering organisations and even with this strong in-house technology focus, about 70% of the value is created within the GKN supply chain. As the business moves forward, this supply chain will have to evolve to keep pace, which will mean changes in how and with whom GKN will do business. The supply chain needs to show the sort of leadership already demonstrated by GKN to step up to the mark. Already this year there have been significant business wins on the F-35 and CSeries programmes. Company seniors hint at some $1.5 billion worth of additional orders in the pipeline this year, but give assurances that capacity for this will be created as and when it's needed, either in-house or within the supply chain.

The last words must go to GKN Aerospace CEO, Marcus Bryson: “There is a heck of a lot going on in technology.” This is just as well, as he also predicts “the next generation single aisle programme will create the mother of all fights for workshare.”

www.gknaerospace.com