Airbus A350 XWB Research Articles

Reuse of CFRP material from Aircraft Manufacturing Parts. Industrial aplications and inverse logistic solution.

The new Airbus A350XWB has the largest % of an aircraft primary structure elements made of composites ever. Thus, it has been a huge challenge to manage thousands of CFRP Tons per year in the part manufacturing plants, and consequently, several initiatives to reduce, reuse and recycle scrap material has been developed during last few years. Illescas Plant is introducing new processes to reuse and recycle CFRP material from wing covers and fuselage parts. Two initiatives are running these days: Reusing of CFRP (prepreg) end of spools and end of rolls to manufacture rowing for stringers that allows to decrease the purchased material in the Plant.

Supply Chain Management Risks: the A350 Development Program

In order to respond to the market demands and create additional value for customers and airlines, Airbus decided to develop a new member of its wide-body Family, Airbus A350 XWB. The A350XW’s benefits of the new manufacturing and assembly techniques, applied on other aircraft of the Airbus Family, such as the A330 and the A380. It also utilizes a supply chain based on the lessons learned over the time from other programs. The paper analyzes the structure of A350 supply chain, describes Airbus’s challenges for managing this supply chain, and highlights some key lessons that could be taken into consideration for the next supply chains of the new product development.

Ultrasonic testing of thin walled components made of aluminum based laminates

The goal of this paper is to evaluate the feasibility of testing thin walled components made of aluminum based laminates using ultrasonic waves. Aluminum alloys are applied in aviation, maritime and railway industries. The advantages of aluminum alloys include high specific strength, good machinability, and formability. In recent years, the position of aluminum as preferred material in transportation has been challenged by composites. The share of composites in the structure of aircraft such as AirBus A350XWB and Boeing 787 Dreamliner exceeds 50%. The application of composites allow weight to be reduced by 10 ÷ 20%. In response to the proliferation of composite structures aluminum industry started developing the next generation of aluminum lithium alloys allowing a reduction in aircraft structure weight by 8 ÷ 15%. In Bombardier CSeries aircraft the fuselage was made of aluminum lithium alloy, while the wings were made of composites. In the near future, both aluminum and composites will be used in aviation. There is a need for the development of technology for testing of thin walled components made of aluminum based sheets. In this work, ultrasonic testing of the aluminum based laminate having section thickness of 1.5 mm is presented. The laminate comprised two aluminum sheets with and without the polyimide interlayer which were joined using friction stir welding technology. The suggested ultrasonic method allowed material discontinuities having a width greater than 0.4 mm to be detected.

How safe are modern aircraft with carbon fiber composite fuselages in a survivable crash?

Composites, especially reinforced with carbon fiber, are light, strong and stiff. They enable aircraft to be lighter and more fuel efficient, which benefits the environment. Carbon fiber reinforced composites have already replaced aluminum as the main material in the fuselages of state-of-the-art airliners like the Airbus A350 XWB and Boeing 787 Dreamliner. But these composites do have an Achilles heel: they are brittle, which can be a problem in a crash. As research into how these materials will perform in an airplane crash is ramping up, we talk to one of the researchers investigating it.

Effect of stacking sequence on Charpy impact and flexural damage behavior of composite laminates

The objective of this work is the characterization and the assessment of the damage in CFRP composite laminates with different stacking sequences subjected to low velocity impact and flexural loading. Charpy impact test and three-point bending test were used in order to obtained the impact response and flexural behavior of different laminates. An experimental test series was carried out to determine impact energy absorption, flexural strength and stiffness and failure mechanisms of composite laminates made from M21E/IMA, an unidirectional prepreg used in Airbus A350 XWB primary structures. It is important to note that both elastic moduli and strength in the principal material directions are different under tension and compression. The flexural modulus is expected to have an intermediate value between the tensile and compression moduli. We analyze the effect of this type of multimodulus materials [1–3] in order to evaluate the influence of the geometry of the specimen on the failure modes (shear or flexural failure modes) observed in the three-point bending test and compare the results with tensile and compression behavior.Two main lay-up configurations have been analyzed: Unidirectional laminates [0]12,[90]12,[45]12 and multidirectional laminates (cross-ply [0/90]3s, angle-ply [±45]3s and quasi-isotropic laminates [0/90/(±45)2]s). Unidirectional laminates are rarely used in structural components but help to assess the different types of damage (splitting, matrix cracking, delamination) and response of the specimens under low-velocity impact and flexural loading. They are usually combined with plies of varying orientation in multidirectional laminates. These laminates exhibit a more complex behavior due to coupling effects and the combination of different failure modes. In this study, both impact and flexural response for the different laminates have been compared. Special attention is paid in the response of multidirectional laminates under flexural (and impact) loading. Shear effects are very important in this type of laminates. Only a limited number of experimental studies have been developed in this context [4–7]. Additionally, the failure modes observed under impact and flexural loading were correlated with fracture energy absorption and load–deflection behavior respectively for the unidirectional and multidirectional laminates.The results have shown that the effect of the stacking sequences on the impact and flexural response depicted similar trends than in the case of tensile response studied in previous works [8–11]. Furthermore, the present work has shown a distinctive behavior of [±45]3s angle-ply laminate.under impact loading due to its pseudo-ductile behavior. This laminate exhibited the best impact performance in terms of averaged absorbed energy but the flexural strength and stiffness drastically decreased compared to [0]12laminate. Finally, SEM and optical micrographs of fracture surfaces were used to gain an insight into the assessment of different type of damage of the previous laminates.

Adaptive Processes for the Aircraft Engines of Tomorrow

AbstractAmong the public's favorites at the ILA Berlin Airshow were the future “stars in the heavens“, such as the Airbus A350 XWB. Rather inconspicuous, but equally spectacular were the manufacturing technologies applied to create more efficient jet engines, which the Fraunhofer researchers, represented by the Innovation Cluster AdaM, displayed in Berlin.

Generating Test Cases with 100-Percent Requirements Coverage Using Design of Experiments

Model-based testing has become a de facto methodology for flight-control law verification and validation today. The recent flight-control programs of commercial aircraft like the Boeing 747-8 and Airbus A350 XWB are verified and validated using model-based test methods. These projects are long-timeframe projects, and so modification and improvements in control laws are predictable. Test cases have to be generated for these modified segments, and the timeframes get compressed as the project approaches the certification phase. Hence, there is a need for test-case automation. Four methods of test-case automation are compared here for their efficacy in ensuring 100% requirements coverage and the time taken to generate such tests. A methodology of defining control theoretic requirements coverage is used here to generate the test cases. Random, simulated annealing, genetic algorithm, and design-of-experiments methods are used to generate the optimized set of test cases. The design of experiments is a method used in the process/manufacturing industry to optimize yield and improve productivity. It has been used in planned experimentation in the chemical, biological, and medical fields. This methodology is found to provide a good insight into the way the input domain influences the coverage metrics for flight-control law tests. It has the highest yield and a fast convergence. Design of experiments comes out as a recommended candidate for test-case automation in the model-based testing of flight-control laws.

Airbus A350XWB overheat detection system

Airbus A350XWB overheat detection system

Virtually there [aerospace manufacturing

The use of virtual reality to assist in designing manufacturing processes is growing. The author visits Airbus in Cheshire to find out how they are using such a system to make the wings for the Airbus A350 XWB.

Fuel package and hydraulic system for Airbus A350 XWB

Fuel package and hydraulic system for Airbus A350 XWB