Waving the flag

When the members of the Flemish Aerospace Group (FLAG) under the leadership of its president Guy Putman decided to meet and listen to speakers discussing the topic of new technologies for future aircraft structures, they chose the magnificent Aula of Ghent University as the setting.

Apart from the more regional organisations generating and transferring technology, FLAG was able to draw in contributions from aerospace prime level players and customers for many of the cluster. Significant contributions from Prof Dr Ing Axel Herrmann, head of the Airbus Composites Technology Centre (CTC) and chair of CFK Valley Stade, and Hans de Graaff from EADS strategy & marketing helped provide this seminar with a highly credible look at where the engineering and manufacturing capability in the European aerostructures supply chain needs to be.

The baseline statistic provided by Herrmann is that 1kg of airframe mass reduction implies a 3 tonne fuel saving over the lifetime of a typical large civil aircraft. This justifies the effort in the aerostructures supply chain to provide lightweighting aerostructures capability through greater use of composites.

The engineering challenge which Airbus has identified on the horizon for A30X is a -20% mass with a simultaneous -20% recurring cost of manufacture. Currently achievable figures are more like -15% mass, but with +70% cost implication, meaning that present composite components are just too expensive. There are plenty of areas of cost reduction to address as for some current CFC parts, 25% of manufacturing cost is in NDT. Cooperating robots are capable of depositing carbon fibre material at 150kg/hr now compared with 3.5kg/hr for manual lay-up.

Herrmann outlined some of his priority areas for achieving this cost reduction, through techniques such as shimless assembly and rivet reduction. Other methods for reducing costs which were discussed are textile technologies for increased deposition rate; out of autoclave curing to reduce the potential bottlenecks within the production flow and automation to increase production rates and consistency. The supply chain will develop along the lines already started with the A350 with, for example, stringer kits eventually being supplied as pre-tooled packages ready for placement directly into fuselage shells.

In terms of cross-sectoral interaction, the influence of automotive volume techniques in composites will be relevant as anticipated volumes are for circa 100,000 frames for future aircraft programmes. Benefits will also accrue from connection with the wind energy sector through the sharing of technologies like automated tape lay-up.

The Airbus led CTC Stade is engaging with the Flemish cluster. The Centre aims to trial Acrosoma through-stitched composite panels produced near Ghent as a game changing and potentially disruptively cost-effective method for producing entire fuselage sections by 2013.

The significant trends predicted by EADS were presented by de Graaff as the writing on the wall in the areas of market, manufacturing, finance, and innovation. He sees the market shifting from a technology driven to a market driven industry. The manufacturing picture will change as national employment is traded for market access in a global context. In addition to the BRIC markets, aerospace sector players will also have to increasingly consider South Korea and South Africa. In finance, R&D funding will move towards decentralisation - through organisations like CFK valley - and the focus of innovation will be on industrialisation.

Much of the responsibility for creating new capability is going to be passed to the regional groupings, generally clustered around research and technology organisations, which is exactly why FLAG is listening to this message. As the founding chairman of FLAG put it: “we do not want to build airplanes, but we want to be present in every airplane built.”

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