Led by efforts at the company's Prestwick, Scotland, site, Spirit will develop solutions essential for the fabrication and assembly of leading edges, wing boxes and lower wing covers.
"Our participation on Wing of Tomorrow marks an important milestone in our support of Airbus," said Spirit senior vice-president, Airbus Programmes, Scott McLarty. "Research and development work like this are key to Spirit's growth strategy, and we are uniquely positioned to offer customers our proven ability to both design and build world class aerostructures such as these."
Added Spirit AeroSystems’ vice-president, Research and Technology, Sean Black: "Spirit is leveraging its full suite of Distinctive Capabilities to tackle the challenge of improving product performance while lowering cost and compressing technology and product development cycles. To accomplish this feat, the projects rely heavily on modelling and simulation throughout all stages of the design-build process."
For example, on one of the projects, Spirit is using cutting-edge composite resin-flow simulation tools to successfully infuse a seven-meter lower wing cover - short-circuiting the trial-and-error approach typical for extremely complex resin infusion processes. The demonstrator is a major step towards delivering a full-scale, resin-infused lower cover to Airbus. Spirit continues to leverage and enhance its patented Intelligent Resin Infusion System (IRISTM) to develop lower-cost, higher-performing structures.
"These projects are not just about composite infusion technology," Black said. "Using digital design and manufacturing approaches, we're developing the product in parallel with the production system. In collaboration with the National Composites Centre and Advanced Forming Research Centre, Strathclyde, we're also developing highly automated fabrication and inspection technologies.
"In addition, we are implementing significant advances in fabrication and assembly tooling technologies. In fact, through applying the Spirit Exact dimensional management philosophy, which essentially enables the parts themselves to become locating tools, we are planning to deliver a leading edge, to include full systems integration, with very little assembly tooling. We are leveraging our full Distinctive Capability portfolio in support of the Wing of Tomorrow objectives."
