Airbus to Use Composites — Reversing Field, Boeing Rival Will Base A320 Successor on Them

Airbus will follow The Boeing Co.'s lead and build a plane with a composite fuselage, despite earlier suggesting that such construction wasn't safe because nobody had done it before.

At a news conference Monday in Paris, EADS co-CEO," Noël Forgeard told Agence France-Presse reporters Airbus plans to develop a new generation of planes to replace its A320 family and that they will be built with lightweight composites.

"Today, we are actively preparing the launch — at a date I'm not going to reveal — of new generations of medium-range aircraft with fuselages that are mostly made of composite materials with very low-cost production," Forgeard said.

Forgeard, the former chief executive of Airbus, is now co-chief executive of the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Co., which owns 80 percent of Airbus.

Airlines want lighter planes because of the high cost of aviation fuel, he said.

Airbus pioneered the use of composites on a commercial jetliner with the tail fin of its A310 in 1985. It will make the wings of its A350, a midsize jet that will compete against the 787, of composite material.

But the A350, scheduled to enter service in 2010, won't have a composite fuselage. Instead, the fuselage will be made of an advanced aluminum alloy that Airbus says will be much less dense, and therefore lighter, than aluminum.

In addition to the 787, Boeing's product development team is already studying a composite replacement for the single-aisle 737 family of jets. In an interview with the Seattle P-I last month, Boeing Commercial Airplanes boss Alan Mulally said a 737 replacement could be ready for airlines as soon as 2012, though it's more likely to be between 2013 and 2015.

www.compositesnews.com...

My understanding is that this announcement was made at luncheon where the main dish was crow.

Of course this will only add to the time and cost of the A350 redesign thus putting Airbust even further behind Boeing.

[edit on 23-4-2006 by El Tiante]

[edit on 23-4-2006 by El Tiante]

Originally posted by El Tiante
...
My understanding is that this announcement was made at luncheon with the main dish was crow.

Of course this will only add to the time and cost of the A350 redesign thus putting Airbust even further behind Boeing.

My understanding is that you have a definitive problem with neutrality. And, to quote a fitting analogy by waynos, "putting a 't' on the end of Airbus does not make you Oscar Wilde." BTW, didn´t your first ban tell you something about the tolerance towards your kind of rhethorics on this board?

And no, this will not have an effect on the A350 because they are speaking of a successor to the A320 - totally different line of jets. The A320 family would have been due for a successor anyway, be it all-metal, mixed materials or all composite. In 10-12 years from now, which is a realistic timeframe, the A320 will be 30 years old. Maybe your problem isnt neutrality but reading comprehension after all.

In any case it was only a question of time until the whole large aircraft industry switches over to composites - such is the nature of technical progress. What I however find mildly amusing is that one of the main punchlines of the anti-Airbus crew always was to critizise those "pesky plastic airplanes"... I just realized how this stopped ENTIRELY with the introduction of the composite 787 closing in.



[edit on 23/4/2006 by Lonestar24]

[edit on 23/4/2006 by Lonestar24]

Here is some stuff that may be of interest to the troll.

Boeing will assemble the aircraft and manufacture its forward fuselage, tail fin, ailerons, flaps, and slats. For its entire history, Boeing has jealously guarded its techniques for designing and mass producing commercial jetliner wings. Due to economic realities, the wings will be manufactured by Japanese companies in Nagoya, while the horizontal stabilizers will be manufactured by Alenia Aeronautica in Italy, and the fuselage sections by Vought in South Carolina, Alenia in Italy, Kawasaki in Japan, and Spirit AeroSystems, in Wichita. [1]

Japanese industrial participation is very important to the project, with 35% workshare, with many of the subcontractors supported and funded by the Japanese government. The Japanese participants are no longer junior partners.

From France, Messier-Dowty will build the landing gear and Thales will supply the integrated standby flight display, electrical power conversion system, and in-flight entertainment.

Honeywell and Rockwell-Collins will provide flight control, guidance and other avionics systems, including standard dual head up guidance systems. Future integration of forward looking infrared is being looked at by Flight Dynamics allowing improved visibility using thermal sensing as part of the HUD system, allowing pilots to "see" through the clouds.

Nose section of the 787-8, unveiled at Spirit Wichita for the first time.

The final assembly will consist of attaching fully-completed subassemblies, instead of building the complete aircraft from the ground up. This is a technique which Boeing has previously used on the 737 program, which involves shipping fuselage barrel sections by rail from Spirit's Wichita, Kansas facility to Boeing's final assembly plant at Renton, Washington. Airbus has also used this technique in the past, although in its case it is more of a political necessity resulting from partner nations' divided workshare.

The 787 will undergo wind-tunnel testing at Boeing's Transonic Wind Tunnel, QinetiQ's five-meter wind tunnel based in Farnborough, UK, and NASA Ames Research Center's wind tunnel, as well as at the French aerodynamics research agency, ONERA.

Now wasn't it you trying to spark a US vs Europe type debate on it when in fact both Airbus and Boeing use various suppliers from across the globe.

Originally posted by Lonestar24

Originally posted by El Tiante
...
Of course this will only add to the time and cost of the A350 redesign thus putting Airbust even further behind Boeing.

My understanding is that you have a definitive problem with neutrality.
[edit on 23/4/2006 by Lonestar24]

[edit on 23/4/2006 by Lonestar24]

Uh neutrality as in you practicing it too?

Either way it looks like Boeing took a chance on this technology and found a way to make it work.

It would be most interesting to see airplanes mostly made of composites and I believe it could happen in time.

Might be far fetched but would it be possible to mold such an aircraft if only in sections?

Originally posted by denythestatusquo
Might be far fetched but would it be possible to mold such an aircraft if only in sections?

mold = Mould?


Well, composites are usually laid up on a mould, there are different techniques but it usually involves a mould of sorts.