Airbus Industrie Research Articles

Investigation of exact analytical solutions for circular notched composite laminates under tensile loading

For the design of composite structures with circular cut-outs analytical, experimental and numerical methods are available. This paper investigates numerous exact analytical methods introduced in literature as an example of the Airbus Industries Test Method for determination of open hole tensile strength, conforming to AITM 1-0007. Experimental testing accompanied by digital image correlation of unidirectional 0° and 90° laminates as well as quasi-isotropic CFRP laminates with width-to-diameter (w/d) ratios of 3 and 5 is conducted. In addition, 3D finite element models of the test specimens are created for detailed analysis on lamina level. A preliminary study on numerous analytical methods introduced in literature shows that application of any of those methods results in one of two possible stress distributions. A qualitative comparison of 2D strain fields on laminate level reveals the high prediction quality of the analytical solutions. Furthermore, a detailed stress analysis on lamina level by comparison to a validated FE model is conducted. The results show that exact analytical solutions exhibit a satisfactory stress prediction quality for w/d ratios as low as 3 and thus can be recommended for preliminary design purposes.

Home at Airbus

Airbus Commercial aircraft, known as Airbus, is a European aeronautics manufacturer with headquarters in Blagnac, in the suburbs of Toulouse, France. The company, which is 100% -owned by the industrial group of the same name, manufactures more than half of the airliners produced in the world and is Boeing's main competitor. Airbus was founded as a consortium by European manufacturers in the late 1960s. Airbus Industry became a SAS (simplified joint-stock company) in 2001, a subsidiary of EADS renamed Airbus Group in 2014 and Airbus in 2017. BAE Systems 20% of Airbus between 2001 and 2006. In 2010, 62,751 people are employed at 18 Airbus sites in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Belgium (SABCA) and Spain. Even if parts of Airbus aircraft are essentially made in Europe some come from all over the world. But the final assembly lines are in Toulouse (France), Hamburg (Germany), Seville (Spain), Tianjin (China) and Mobile (United States). Airbus subsidiaries are also located in the United States, China, Japan and India. Airbus produced its first aircraft, the A300, in 1972 and offers a range of commercial aircraft ranging from the A318 to the A380, as well as aircraft and aircraft for business men and women. Airbus was the first manufacturer to install an electric flight control system on the A320. In 2013, Airbus produced 626 aircraft and won 1,503 net orders. This is the best commercial result in the history of aeronautics. At the beginning of 2017, Airbus announced that it had broken its own record of deliveries with the production of 688 aircraft this year, thus becoming No. 1.

The Boeing blueprint for dealing with organized labor

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to examine changing employer strategies in dealing with organized labor through Boeing’s negotiations with its local Puget Sound, Washington-based District 751 of the International Association of Machinists and the district’s international parent. Design/methodology/approach – Considers factors including leveraging the slow growth of the US economy and the resulting job-security issues among US workers generally and Boeing workers in particular, along with the divided age composition of Boeing’s workforce to achieve market-share competitiveness with Boeing’s chief global rival, Europe-based Airbus Industries. Findings – Advises that there is no substitute for early strategic analysis of bargaining goals and strategies, particularly with respect to economic bargaining. Practical implications – Advances the view that a well-defined bargaining plan is the most likely key to success in any set of union collective bargaining agreement negotiations. Social implications – Considers the tensions that may exist between younger members of the workforce, whose priority is likely to be job security, and older members, who may be more concerned about their pensions. Originality/value – Presents the ongoing story of collective bargaining agreement negotiations at Boeing.

Private International law – Antisuit injunctions: Airbus Industrie GIE v Patel

The author examines the law of transnational antisuit injunctions, looking at the facts and ruling in the case of Airbus Industrie GIE v Patel [1999] AC 119 and broader issues for the decision. Article by Olusoji Elias (Member of the International Bar Association) published in Amicus Curiae - Journal of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies and its Society for Advanced Legal Studies. The Journal is produced by the Society for Advanced Legal Studies at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, University of London.

Airbus A350 XWB update

A350 XWB (extra wide body), the aircraft that Airbus Industrie did not want to build, is now visibly taking shape, propelled by fully committed engineering and management teams within Airbus itself and throughout its supply chain. George Marsh reviews the project so far.

Competitive Assessment of the U.S. Large Civil Aircraft Aerostructures Industry

The LCA aerostructures industry is truly global, with manufacturers from all parts of the world supplying the two major remaining LCA producers, The Boeing Co. of the United States and the former Airbus Industrie, G.I.E. of France. Airbus is in the final stages of its transformation to a single corporate entity and was recently renamed 'The Airbus Company.' For the purposes of this investigation, aerostructures are structural assemblies, primarily constructed of aluminum, titanium, and composite materials, that house passengers, crew, and cargo of an LCA, dictate the aircraft attitude, and support the aircraft on the ground. The leading LCA aerostructures industries in the world in terms of volume of production and breadth of product line are in the United States and Europe. The industries in Canada and Asia are somewhat smaller. The global industry is undergoing a process of consolidation, necessitated by the trend toward increased responsibility imposed on aerostructures producers by the LCA manufacturers, and cost reduction pressures.

Application of the cohesive model for predicting the residual strength of a large scale fuselage structure with a two-bay crack

The residual strength of a curved and stiffened panel containing a two-bay crack was assessed using the cohesive model. This panel represents a section of a wide-body aeroplane fuselage. The tests were conducted at IMA GmbH Dresden in cooperation with Airbus Industries Germany. The structural panel was modelled using 3D finite elements and a layer of cohesive elements ahead of each crack tip allowing for 70 mm crack extension . Identification of the cohesive parameters was done on small laboratory test pieces. Special effort was made for the transfer of these parameters to the structure. Reasonably conservative predictions of the residual strength of the panel were achieved. The boundary conditions of the loading devices of the test rig are shown to have substantial influence on the predictions.

Failure-Finding Frequency for a Repairable System Subject to Hidden Failures

This paper addresses the problem of selecting a suitable failure-finding maintenance policy for repairable systems. We will consider hidden failures that do not interrupt aircraft operation when they occur, such as failures of warning devices or backup components. We will study both corrective maintenance actions, carried out after item failure, and periodic failure finding, designed to check whether a system still works. Based on our probabilistic analytic developments, the optimal maintenance policy is then obtained as a solution of an optimization problem, in which the maintenance cost rate is the objective function and the risk of corrective maintenance is the constraint function. Finally, we will present an application of our methodology to a real-world case provided by Airbus Industries.

Large-Eddy-Simulation Modeling for Aerothermal Predictions Behind a Jet In Crossflow

Numerical investigations of a hot square jet in crossflow issuing perpendicularly to a flat plate are presented. This current work is initiated by Airbus Industries to better predict the aircraft aerothermal environment. Advanced numerical methods are tested in this specific context. In particular, the numerical approaches of large eddy simulations and Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes simulations are assessed in an industrylike configuration. Specific attention is brought to the large eddy simulations of a jet in a crossflow momentum-flux ratio of 0.77 and a Reynolds number of 93,900 (based on crossflow velocity and jet diameter). Numerical issues such as grid resolution and boundary condition choices are addressed. Comparison of the Reynolds-averaged quantities obtained from large eddy simulations with Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes simulation data at several cross-stream locations underlines the potential of large eddy simulations for aerothermal predictions. Large-scale motions observed experimentally and numerically are reproduced by the unsteady large-eddy-simulation fields, and spectral analyses reveal the ability of the large eddy simulations to reproduce the coherent structure frequencies.

Aircraft ditching: a free surface / free motion problem

Within a national research project on aircraft dynamic loads and resultant structural response the task was given to investigate aircraft emergency landings on water, generally called “ditching”. The work was initiated and funded by Airbus Industries. As controlled experiments for such events are costly and difficult to extrapolate to full-scale, the study at HSVA was completely based on computer simulations. The commercial RANS solver “Comet” was used to determine the path of the aircraft fuselage from initial conditions in air given at t = 0. After being released in air, the aircraft fuselage was free to react on the forces and moments developing at the free surface. In order to simplify the approach the hydrodynamic forces were derived in all details by the RANS simulation while the aerodynamic forces and moments were approximated. Simultaneously, the simulations were performed at the TUHH using the program “Ditch”, based on an extension of the “momentum method” developed by von Karman and Wagner. The results are presented in this paper for generic fuselage shapes called A-, D- and J-Body in terms of motion histories and section forces.

High-Speed Dreams: NASA and the Technopolitics of Supersonic Transportation, 1945-1999 (review)

Reviewed by Virginia P. Dawson High-Speed Dreams: NASA and the Technopolitics of Supersonic Transportation, 1945–1999. By Erik M. Conway. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005. Pp. xvii+369. $49.95. Erik Conway has aptly titled his history of American efforts to develop supersonic-transport aircraft High-Speed Dreams to underscore the past century's infatuation with speed as a symbol of Western technical progress. He focuses on three American efforts to develop an SST and shows how national security, environmental concerns, and market forces provided the rationale for decisions at different points in the story. What makes his account particularly valuable is his ability to provide the economic, social, and political context for the technology he describes. Conway seems to have struck the right balance between attention to the nuts-and-bolts of aircraft design and discussion of the larger issues, particularly state support for advanced technology. The book's prize from the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics is well deserved. The first effort to develop a high-speed airplane began during the late 1950s as a military project. However, when the development of advanced missile technology obviated the need for a supersonic bomber, the dreams of aircraft designers were transferred to the commercial arena. By the early 1960s, proponents of an American SST used not only its propaganda value in the cold war, but also the need to compete with a state-supported consortium of European manufacturers that was developing the Concorde, to justify its funding. Conway suggests that the cancellation of the American SST as a result of anti-sonic-boom environmentalists is only half the story. By 1971, Boeing's profitability was eroding, and it seemed clear that the SST would never prove economically viable. More important, Airbus Industrie, formed by the European consortium, threatened the American monopoly in the subsonic aircraft market. The SST had become an unwelcome diversion from the development of more competitive, if slower, aircraft. Surprisingly, given the aerospace industry's lukewarm support, NASA received political and financial backing for a relatively small effort to develop a supersonic airplane. The Advanced Supersonic Transport (AST) program, later renamed the Supersonic Cruise Aircraft Research (SCAR) program, was cancelled by the Reagan administration in 1981 as an example of "corporate welfare." Nevertheless, this program provided funding for important scientific investigations into the depletion of the ozone layer. During the 1990s, NASA and the aircraft industry tried one last time to realize their high-speed dreams. The new plane, dubbed the "Orient Express" because it was to put Asian markets within a few hours of the American continent, was proposed as a means to trump Europe's next-generation SST, the "Concorde II." It too was cancelled. [End Page 866] Conway concludes his star-crossed history of America's infatuation with high speeds by offering a perceptive analysis of the incompatibility of the technologist's belief in unlimited progress and the environmentalist's stress on the need to accept limitations in order to save the earth's resources for future generations. He points out that the demise of the American SST is connected to the rise of the "free market" ideology of the 1980s and 1990s. Markets, he points out, never drive the development of very large and expensive technological projects: "Only the state has the ability to fund the grand techno-dreams of aerospace enthusiasts, be they supersonic/ hypersonic transports, air-breathing launch vehicles for routine space access, giant orbiting solar-power stations, or the like" (p. 305). To disentangle the various forces that beset the three American efforts to develop supersonic-transport aircraft, Conway has made excellent use of documents from many archival collections, including the Boeing Company (one of the few aircraft manufacturers with a publicly accessible collection), the National Archives, NASA Research Center, the Sierra Club, and presidential libraries. For his early chapters, in addition to archival material, Conway had excellent secondary sources to draw upon, including a body of work...

Laser template projection for composite assembly

Michael Bruehl of LAP GmbH Laser Applikationen, Germany, describes installations at Airbus Industries facilities in Germany and Spain.

Power, Techno-Economics, and Transatlantic Relations in 1987–1999: The Case of Airbus Industrie and Galileo

The essay documents that two projects (Airbus Industrie and Galileo) indicate that the quest for strategic independence coupled with the fear of reduced influence in international affairs and declining international economic competitiveness were powerful driving forces behind European efforts to challenge the U.S. commercial and technological supremacy in the aerospace sector in 1987-1999.

The New Regimen: Its History and Future after South Africa

Abstract: The Convention on International Interests in Mobile Equipment and the Protocol thereto on Matters specific to Aircraft Equipment were opened to signature in Cape Town on 16 November 2001. Twenty-six States have to date signed both instruments and the signs are good for their early entry into force. The origins of UNIDROIT’s work in this area were both legal and economic in nature, legal in the sense that the lex rei sitae is not particularly appropriate for resolving disputes concerning the validity, enforceability and priority ranking of assets of a kind likely to be moving across or beyond national frontiers on a regular basis, economic by reason of the potential that asset-based financing could have in enhancing access to high-value mobile equipment for debtors in developing and emerging economies. Considerable research by UNIDROIT, and in particular Professor R.C.C. Cuming, provided the basis for this work. A preliminary draft Convention, drawn up by a UNIDROIT study group, chaired by Professor Sir Roy Goode, between 1993 and 1997, and a preliminary draft Protocol on Matters specific to Aircraft Equipment, drawn up by a working group the core members of which were the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the International Air Transport Association (IATA) and the Aviation Working Group organized by Airbus Industrie and The Boeing Company, between 1997 and 1998, provided the basis for intergovernmental negotiations, co-sponsored by UNIDROIT and ICAO, between 1999 and 2000. The benefits of the new international regimen are intended to be extended to other categories of high-value mobile equipment, in the first place railway rolling stock and space assets. Governmental experts are already at work on a preliminary draft Protocol to the Cape Town Convention on Matters specific to Railway Rolling Stock. Governmental experts will commence consideration of a preliminary draft Protocol on Matters specific to Space Assets in December 2003. A Preparatory Commission was set up by the Cape Town diplomatic Conference, under the guidance and supervision of the ICAO Council, to act as Provisional Supervisory Authority for the establishment of the International Registry for aircraft objects that will underpin the Cape Town Convention and Aircraft Protocol. It was directed by the diplomatic Conference to ensure that the International Registry be set up at the latest by the time of the entry into force of the Convention and the Aircraft Protocol. Those States that participated in the diplomatic Conference and interested private parties were urged by the diplomatic Conference voluntarily to make available, at the earliest possible date, the start-up funding that will be needed for the Preparatory Commission and ICAO to carry out the tasks given to them by the diplomatic Conference. The new international regimen will greatly reduce the cost of credit for the financing of the different categories of high-value mobile equipment covered thereby. The economic gains expected to flow from effective implementation of the Convention and the Aircraft Protocol run to several billion dollars on an annual basis. It is anticipated that the novel solutions embodied in the new international regimen will filter through to the new generation of laws governing secured transactions in general being put in place. The new international regimen is likely to have special significance for developing countries, by providing them with the foreign capital investment needed to help them develop their infrastructure. The unique level of participation at all stages of the development of the new international regimen by representatives of the world of practice, and in particular the different business sectors involved, means that the Convention and its Protocols reflect industry consensus to an unprecedented degree and thus enhances the chances of the new international regimen attracting widespread acceptance.

BOEING VS. AIRBUS: COMPETING FOR THE FUTURE

Boeing Company has been the world's leading producer of large commercial airplanes for several decades. However, in the late 1990s, Europe‐based Airbus Industrie competed with Boeing aggressively and captured almost fifty percent of the over‐100‐seat airplane market. This paper examines the battle between Boeing and Airbus, including a concise report on Airbus' launch of its A380 superjumbo project. The paper also contains the authors' recommendations to Boeing and the U.S. government.

Acquisitions and alliances in the aerospace industry: an unusual triad

The two primary sectors of the aerospace industry, commercial and military aviation, are each dominated by two key firms Airbus Industrie and Boeing in the commercial sector, and Lockheed Martin and Boeing in the military sector. This unique triad offers an opportunity for examining how technology acquisition and business development are pursued under such circumstances. The paper shows that alliances are utilised by both major players in commercial aviation, while acquisitions are the principal strategies selected in the military aviation industry. Boeing appears to shift its strategic choices appropriately by industry to match its competitors as well as to correspond to the approach advocated by related technology strategy literature.

A method for predicting errors when interacting with finite state systems. How implicit learning shapes the user's knowledge of a system

Abstract This paper describes a method for predicting the errors that may appear when human operators or users interact with systems behaving as finite state systems. The method is a generalization of a method used for predicting errors when interacting with autopilot modes on modern, highly computerized airliners [Proc 17th Digital Avionics Sys Conf (DASC) (1998); Proc 10th Int Symp Aviat Psychol (1999)]. A cognitive model based on spreading activation networks is used for predicting the user's model of the system and its impact on the production of errors. The model strongly posits the importance of implicit learning in user–system interaction and its possible detrimental influence on users' knowledge of the system. An experiment conducted with Airbus Industrie and a major European airline on pilots' knowledge of autopilot behavior on the A340-200/300 confirms the model predictions, and in particular the impact of the frequencies with which specific state transitions and contexts are experienced.

Flying wing—problems and decisions

Traditionally, one of the priority directions in TsAGI's research activity is searching for new concepts in the field of aviation technologies. In the context of these studies basic problems related to the development of advanced large-capacity aircraft of a flying-wing (FW) configuration have been studied at TsAGI since the late-1980s (Symposium on “Aeronautical Technology in XXI Century”, Moscow, September 1989; Conceptual design for passenger airplane of very large capacity in “flying wing” layout, ICAS 96-4.6.1, 1996). In the present paper primary emphasis is placed on the rationale of selecting FW main design solutions, aerodynamic configuration, structural concept as well as on development and analysis of alternative configurations. Consideration is also given to the problem, which is in the opinion of experts the most critical for this airplane type, namely, meeting FAR-25 standards with respect to airplane operation in emergency situations. At present the work on this concept is being conducted under the International Scientific and Technical Center grant No. 548. The project collaborators are AIRBUS INDUSTRIE and Boeing.

Alertness management in long-haul flying

The introduction of ultralong-haul aircraft in recent years has highlighted the need for alertness management advice to be available to flight and cabin crew. British Airways has for some time provided classroom training but, more recently, has developed Alertness Management Advice Cards to provide route- and time-specific advice for the management of rest and sleep by long-haul crews. Using a framework based on the Airbus Industrie publication `Coping with Long-Range Flying', British Airways created a set of cards and accompanying information booklet specifically for its Boeing 777 routes and a trial of 40 flight crew members was undertaken to assess the usefulness and acceptability of the concept. Subjects found the advice cards easy to use and helpful and the information booklet clear in outlining the physiology of sleep, alertness and circadian rhythms. Following the study, further advice cards were developed to cover the entire British Airways long-haul network and the complete Alertness Management package comprises a General Information section summarising the classroom teaching together with 30 Advice Cards covering 42 different route schedules grouped by direction of travel, time of departure and length of the layover. The cards contain general and specific advice including recommendations for light exposure, rest patterns and meal times presented in written and diagrammatic forms. Examples of sections from the Advice Cards together with results of the initial study will be presented and discussed.

An Empirical Examination of Airframe Manufacturers’ Safety Performance

Two firms—Boeing Company and Airbus Industrie—dominate the 100-and-more-passenger-aircraft industry. The principle focus of this study is the safety posture of the two firms’ products. We first discuss the competitive nature of the industry and previous research in commercial aviation safety before presenting a statistical analysis. The article then examines the data using the least squares regression method and the logit method; it also reviews the relationship between the variables using correlation matrices. The data investigation yields statistical evidence that over the 9-year period between 1990 to 1998, there was no significant difference in safety records between the Boeing and Airbus product lines. A data analysis for the past 4 years of the same period, however, indicates that Airbus is improving its safety posture when compared to the recent safety record of Boeing products.