December 10^th 2009, Boeing reported that “the program has validated the airplane structure for the 787 Dreamliner”, and announced that, subject to weather conditions, Dreamliner one is expected to make its first flight within a week or so. First flight will take place very careful, with sunny conditions and limited wind, and no problems are expected. For the moment the whole first flight exercise is to appease reporters and investors. Once the window is extended conditions get more severe and serious problems will undoubtedly surface, and one can only hope and pray that nobody gets killed. Not since the Comet has a civil aircraft been so badly  prepared for flight testing.

Difficult to depict on what grounds the structure of the aircraft has been validated. As was argued in the previous post, the aircraft is without reliable model. All main structural tests performed so far – wing box, blow test and wing bending test – failed by wide margin from the modeled predictions. Each time the structure required comprehensive strengthening, provisionally applied, and only the wing box sustained ultimate load. The blow test has not even been repeated, nor has properly strengthening been performed leaving the planes with thousands of wrongly place fasteners. Remember that it took only a wrongly chosen O-ring to destroy the Challenger. The repeated wing bending test has been performed to limit load only, that is two third of the load required for specification. Validation cannot be described otherwise than based on wishful modeling.

Another aspect that has to be considered is that the test flight aircraft differ in significant way from the ground structures that have been tested so far, and are dissimilar. Each of these aircraft present a differing structure, that is with multiple specific modifications, redesigns and repairs, when Boeing and its partners slowly learned to deal with composites – the extend of which deviations is not clearly known to Boeing. It would be interesting just to learn about the weight of each basic structure and the numbers and types of fasteners applied in each of the flight test aircraft. This means that these aircraft will behave differently, for the better or the worse, leaving the models ineffective.

Remember that structural problems with the Comet surfaced once the planes were in service, as was also the case with for example the F111. So many were killed, so many tragic accidents could have been easily avoided given ample time for reasoning and development. The question is, why were they killed.

Management and engineers at Boeing – and for that part the FAA – are under immense pressure to deliver what is physically virtually impossible. Stakes have probably never been so high in corporate history. One can doubt the design rationale, that is argumentation and justification leading to the decision to validate the structure – sound reasoning cast in shadow by commercial interests. This went terribly wrong with the Comet, and played also havoc with the accident of the Columbia and when the Space shuttle Columbia was still in orbit. In hindsight, the causes that led to these accidents are similar, too much pressure leading to ignorance. All involved now at Boeing are undoubtedly well aware that with these past accidents nobody was convicted for such behavior, too much at stake. This may be poor comfort for those facing the rising sun, let the lessons learned therefore serve at least to avoid future ignorance.

Boeing is presently at crossroads to decide whether to proceed with their all composite adventure, now the advantage of lightweight has diminished . Be aware that it will take years and much more resources to develop a reliable and safe all composite aircraft – probably another thousand days to come if ever – so much unfinished business and issues that have not been properly approached and researched. Ignorance will inevitably lead to a repeat of the Comet.

Ignorance that led to the accidents with the Comet, Concorde and Columbia is further detailed in separate chapters that can be downloaded at this site.

A thousand days, that have been a horrible dream – except that orders kept flowing in – but finally at last after countless prevarication and fabrication, cheating and lying, assurances and reassurances, and endless delays and postponements, Boeing somehow managed to fix together six test aircraft, later to be refurbished for delivery to first customers who however declined the honor, leaving Boeing no other option than to take a heavy loss and junk these liners, as did customers already with some hundred orders this year. Boeing now hopes that Junkliner one will make its first flight December 15 th 2009, and rumor has it that Junkliner two might take to the air also this year. Junkliners three to six are still in various stages of completion.

A thousand days, when the fake version was transformed into the present junk version, however, seemingly endless changes and fixes and redesigns and new designs and modifications and adjustments and conversions and revisions and adaptations, with costs spiraling out of control, could not prevent that weight kept increasing, and lightweight is what composites are all about. Exact figures are not known, but overweight of the Junkliner must be well over 15,000 pounds, with total costs heading for the twenty five billion mark. More worrisome, the Junkliner is not safe to fly.

A thousand days, when in a desperate attempt to save on weight the wing box was shaved off too much and consequently failed during testing, and had to be provisionally strengthened to withstand 150% ultimate load. The fix took more than a year and required additional aluminum stiffeners to be affixed alongside the spars as well as about 200 clips and brackets and about 500 fasteners.

A thousand days, when providing the aircraft reliable lighting protection proved far more complicated than anticipated. No problem with aluminum aircraft, it took Boeing five years of hard work to find out that the measures they deemed necessary were ‘impractical’, but the FAA agreed to relax the rules for lightning certification – aluminum aircraft are no longer benchmark – leaving the aircraft possibly defenseless in a thunderstorm.

A thousand days, when Boeing declared the blow test a success, to find out some weeks later that numerous fasteners had popped out during the test. Close inspection revealed that thousands of fasteners – Boeing admitted to some 8000 per plane – but probably much more if not all are wrongly placed. Only some were fixed, but most were left because Boeing found it again ‘impractical’ to inspect and properly fix all fasteners, and again the FAA agreed that this could wait until test flights were completed. These fasteners are loaded during twelve months of flight testing to their absolute limit in high altitudes, fast descend, simulated decompression, freezing temperatures, desert heat, lightning thunderstorm, hard landing and so on.

A thousand days, when it appeared that Boeing was not even able to properly connect a wing to the fuselage, the rationale of its existence, and waited three months to admit that during the wing-bending test serious damage occurred along the wing to body join. This happened at a very low load level, reports suggest at about 103 to 105%, or just above limit load. This means that cracks initiated at much lower load level, probably below 75% of limit load, or just half of ultimate load that the wing must be able to withstand for certification. Some thirty four delaminated sites were identified and had to be repaired in the direct vicinity of the fastener holes where the skin is connected to the stringers, which sites stretch as a row and cover some 15% of the length of the upper wing to body join.

A thousand days, when the wing to body join of the static test frame was somehow repaired and strengthened, and a new glitch turned up – they could have known. To obtain the required extremely close spark free fittings Boeing chooses to shrink the fasteners in liquid nitrogen, to expand when placed in the fastener hole. Interference fitting is common practice with metals, but should be avoided with composites at critical locations, as is here the case. The expanding fasteners will induce heavy prestressing of the composite in the direct vicinity of the fastener hole, and delaminiation is then difficult to avoid as Boeing discovered. Moreover, the prestress will increase the strength of the join, which most probably flawed the results of the wing bending test because composites creep, which means that the prestress relieves over time, loosening the fitting and gradually weakening the join once the aircraft enters service.

A thousand days, when it appeared that the models that are in place at Boeing are way out of reality, and still are. It is impossible to include in the models the stress behavior of a beefed up wing box, the effect of thousands of wrongly placed fasteners, the behavior of a fixed wing to body join including the effect of thirty four repaired fastener holes, and the effect of numerous other modifications. To sum up, the Junkliner is without reliable model, something difficult to deny by Boeing and the FAA, which means that the model can’t reliable fit the results obtained during the wing bending test, when the static airframe was subjected to limit load only – ultimate load has to be awaited until spring 2010, but should here be performed before flight testing.

A thousand days, and not a sensible word from either Boeing or the FAA on special conditions imposed for certification of the Dreamliner, like testing for bad crashworthiness, low impact performance, toxic flammability and insufficient protection of these aircraft from the direct and indirect effects of lighting. It is well known that all composite aircraft have very low damage tolerance, but safety margins have been adapted from aluminum aircraft that have very high damage tolerance, however an adaptation without any scientific justification. With aluminum aircraft the safety margin has gradually come down from 200% to the present 150%, based on long time experience. Which means that safety margins for all composite have to be adjusted to compensate for inexperience and low damage tolerance, and to withstand at least 175% ultimate load, if not 200% or more, until physical test results prove otherwise.

A thousand days, when Boeing, desperate to save on weight, decided that Dreamliners to be delivered to customers will have a completely newly designed wing box, will have completely newly designed wings, will have completely newly designed wiring, and so on. In short more than half of the structure of the Dreamliner differs completely from the Junkliner – but the plane will remain between 5,000 pounds and 10,000 pounds overweight, and will remain vulnerable in a lightning environment.

A thousand days, when Vought Aircraft Industries got fed up with Boeing and decided it better to step out the Dreamliner partnership, and Boeing had to take over The North Charleston facility that makes the rear sections of the composite fuselage at a hefty one billion; and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries who produces the centre wing box of the Dreamliner broke ranks when after careful consideration they decided it better to use traditional aluminum instead of composites for both the wing box and the wings of their own new MRJ regional jet liner, claiming that that aluminum provides more freedom of design, makes structural changes easier and appears not to affect the weight. Further embarrassment when Trans-States, the US regional carrier, placed firm orders for 50 MRJ’s and took 50 options, October 2009.

A thousand days, when finally at last the first Junkliner might line up at Everett to start a reckless flight test program, a plane with a beefed up wing box, a plane with thousands of loose and wrongly placed fasteners, a plane with provisionally strengthened wing to body joins, a plane without adequate lighting protection, a plane not properly inspected due to poor or total lack of quality control, a plane tested at far to low safety margins if not flawed, a plane without model, a plane with some 15,000 pounds overweight, a plane that does not resemble anymore the Dreamliner that Boeing intends to deliver to customers, in short a plane unsuitable, but also here the FAA agreed that this will do for certification – the Comet all over again.

Launch images of the Shuttle Columbia in 2003 also revealed a serious impact during take-off. This was ignored, as was standard procedure since impact damage had occurred on all previous 112 missions. In some cases, damage was often severe, but was handled as just another turn-around issue that was dealt with when each orbiter was prepped for its next flight, and it was by sheer luck that an accident did not happen on those first 112 flights. But during the 113^th Shuttle flight, which was flown by Columbia and her seven crewmembers, NASA’s ignorance – or, rather, NASA’s reluctance to better understand what they were dealing with regarding debris impacts – led to the loss of Columbia and her crew.  (Further details on this can be found and downloaded in the appendix on the right.)

That the heat shield was vulnerable to impact damage was very well known. “The heat shield of ceramic tiles and the reinforced carbon carbon panels were not designed to be damaged in any way for any reason. That’s why the orbiter isn’t allowed to fly through rain, stay outside when it hails, or risk having workers drop tools on it”. Columbia was the first Space Shuttle to fly back in 1981, and even on its first flight had sustained heavy damage. More than 300 tiles had to be replaced upon completion of its first mission, but this was no surprise to the engineers who later acknowledged to the Investigation Board that they had known in advance that the External Tank “was going to produce the debris shower that occurred”. It is therefore difficult to understand why NASA paid no attention to the impact behaviour of the heat shield materials when the Space Shuttle was designed, even more so when shuttles returned with heavily damaged heat shields. At the time of the Columbia accident in 2003, only a rudimentary test program had been performed in 1999, and that was not even completed. The carbon-carbon panels that eventually led to the Columbia accident were never examined for impact response properties.

After the Columbia accident the fleet was grounded and NASA started a “return to flight program” that would last for over 2 years. For the first time, the impact response of the heat shield materials was studied in detail. With no robust test methods available, the program relied heavily on impact modelling. At first glance such modelling should not be too complicated. Only single impact events have to be considered, and just four impact materials were involved; that is, lumps of foam and ice against the reinforced carbon-carbon panels and ceramic tiles. These materials are relatively simple and characterization proved not all that difficult to calculate. Broader conditions could also be fairly accurately specified; that is impact geometry, impact velocity, and angle of impact. But impact was not well understood and the modelling soon became a very complicated issue. It took the hi-powered computers at NASA more than 2.5 million hours of calculating time over six months to perform the complex analysis. No question the results were essential for understanding the cause of the accident and contributed in significant ways to our understanding of impacts that have never been researched in such detail before. Unfortunately, calculated results could not be properly validated with physical results because of a lack of proper test methods. In the end the modelling proved only the obvious; that is, that it allows for the study of material impact behaviour in some detail, but does not alter material behaviour. The first return-to-flight, by the Shuttle Discovery, again experienced multiple foam loss during launch on the 28^th of July, 2005. “The large size of some of the foam loss caused concern because they were much larger than analysis had predicted was likely” , and subsequent flights provided a similar picture. The Space Shuttle is just designed incorrectly, as is further explained in the appendix at the right.

It is therefore of utmost importance that as much imagery as is possible is obtained during each launch. For detailed inspection in space the Orbiter is now provided with a robot-arm with sensors that provide a limited ability to inspect the tiles underneath the Shuttle shortly after it reaches orbit. Photo imagery of the acreage tiles across the bottom of the Orbiter is also taken by the crew of the International Space Station before docking. Unfortunately, repair in orbit remains difficult, if not impossible. “Despite comprehensive efforts to develop TPS repair materials and techniques, the state-of-the-art technology in this area has yielded modest technology to support the capability. As a result, continued efforts do not hold promise of significant capabilities beyond those in hand”. But the astronauts now have at least a chance and in case a repair is not possible another Space Shuttle can be launched for a rescue mission. This is contrary to conventional aircraft that have to cope with the force of gravity instantly when serious damage occurs.

Aircraft are much more susceptible to impact than a space shuttle through accidental collision with ground handling equipment, tool damage, de-icer impact, moisture and rain, sand storms, runway debris, engine debris, blade loss and rotor burst, hail stones, lightning strike shock waves, bird strikes, meteorites, hard landings, busted tire debris, and wheel threats. These impact occurrences do not present much of a problem with aluminium aircraft, but pose a serious safety risk with aircraft where the skin is made completely out of composites that are much more vulnerable to impact than the ceramic tiles and the carbon-carbon panels of the Space Shuttle. Composites can even get damaged with low velocity impacts, for example by dropping a tool or by walking on a wing. To put it bluntly, with all-composite aircraft the window glazing provides much better impact response than the composite skin itself, as is discussed in some detail in “An impossible dream”. This means that all-composite aircraft will experience a lot of impact damage during their service lifetime; damage that, because of the intricacies of the composite material, accumulates and is compounded when repaired. It appears that this has been largely ignored by Boeing and Airbus in a way that shows striking resemblance to the Space Shuttle. One concern is multiple delamination that might interact and link up to form larger delaminated areas that can hardly be detectable.  This is essentially similar to widespread fatigue damage that can occur with aluminium aircraft, were cracks link up to form a larger crack that can no longer be contained, as happened during Aloha flight 243, a Boeing 737 that lost a large part of its upper fuselage during flight. It has to be awaited for the results of the investigation to understand what caused a large hole to appear in the 737 fuselage of Southwest flight 387 last week.

Another concern that has not been studied in any detail is the effect of multiple impacts, that is a sequence of repetitive impacts at locations very close to each other. An impact face that moves at high velocity through a hail storm can experience such repetitive impacts. It is also not clear how two or more impacts that occur simultaneously close to each other affect one another, but could intensify the delamination process. Impact geometry has not been studied in great detail, for example, the effect of rounded and sharp impact, and self-rotation of the impactor. Other influences include the stressed or vibrating impact face or already damaged impact areas, and of course temperature and humidity, to mention only the most important and the most obvious. This makes clear that modelling can only provide an approximation of what happens with real world impacts.

Most severe are hail impacts. Hail stones can be more than 4 inch in diameter and impacts are continuous, repetitive, and widespread, and are likely to occur at cruise speed; that is, some 800 km/hr or 497 m/hr. Such impact sequences can cause severe damage, even with aluminium aircraft as the following picture shows. The question becomes how a composite nose will behave under such circumstances. Given composites’ low impact tolerance, the nose and other critical sections of all-composite aircraft should be tested for such impact events in a way similar to how the engines are tested. These are run at full speed when a load of ice chunks are released in front of the engine, as is illustrated in the following video. The problem is that the hail is not at cruise velocity. Additional tests are performed to simulate this effect, but it involves again a single impact event. The vanes are constructed out of composite but are provided with titanium edges that encounter the impact. The vanes are running at such high speeds that any particle is completely grinded and accelerated upon contact with these titanium edges; that is, before the incoming material reaches the composite faces that are only loaded by centrifugal sliding (and some impact) of very fine particles. The composite vanes would be severely damaged if they were not rotating.

Unfortunately there is no test method available yet that can throw a continuous spread and stream of hail stones at high velocity towards an engine or a nose or wing section, as is further explained in “Sudden impact”, which can be downloaded at the right. Physical testing involves only single hail-stone impacts with the aid of a pressure gun, a rather complicated test method. Also mathematical modelling is limited to such single impacts and of little value, as has been explained before. Real world testing is, however, most important as the tests that were performed after the Columbia accident showed. Analyses indicated that the heat shield was damaged through impact of a rather large piece of foam against a carbon-carbon panel. For many engineers at NASA this was difficult to believe. So, a test was performed when the impact of piece of foam against a carbon-carbon panel was accurately simulated in a 1:1 test. “I don’t think anyone expected to see a 16-inch square hole”, one of the engineers reported later. “In the blink of an eye, there it was, and hundreds of people immediately came to terms with how much damage a piece of foam can do”. The Columbia accident is further described in the appendix that can be downloaded at the right.

It is therefore of utmost importance that an accurate and robust method of testing becomes available for 1:1 impact testing of all composite aircraft, or at least of full scale parts that are susceptible to impact. This author is working on a simple test method that makes it possible to simulate such real life impact sequences, 1:1 in a fully deterministic way including real environment conditions, that is temperature of minus 60 degrees Celsius. This method is much more simple than the one described in “Sudden impact” and will be presented on this site soon. It will then be possible to see the real effects of hail impacts and compare impact response of aluminium and all-composite structures. That is, when Boeing and Airbus are prepared to perform such tests. It will be most interesting to see to what extend the fibres offer protection.

A comment was received  on ‘An impossible dream’ concerning the A380 discussed in chapter 1 (pages 6-9) and is here answered. The original comment is printed below. For more comments go to posting June 9, 2009, below.

Thank you for your comments – they are sincerely and very much appreciated.

First, let me say that the book is not in any way intended to be about the Airbus A380 – an airplane and engineering marvel that I greatly admire.  But it is an aircraft that paved the way for composed aircraft, and that is the reason that I included a small section in the book on the A380.

With regards to your specific comments:

I do not fully understand your comment about equivalent passengers. The only purpose of civil aircraft is transporting passengers, their luggage, and cargo.. So it is that small difference in weight between MTOW with and without passengers and luggage that has to make the money. I can’t see how to express that as a percentage – but I will give it some thought.

I do mention in the book:

“What has surfaced is that the A380 is lower on fuel than expected and everybody who has seen the aircraft at take-off or landing has been surprised by the silence of the aircraft – more than 6db below a 747-400 on takeoff and up to 3.7db quieter on arrival. Compared with the 747-400, the A380 requires 17 per cent less runway than the Boeing 747-400 to take off and 11 per cent less to land and cruises at a 4000ft higher initial cruise altitude, a 20 knot lower approach speed and 1100 nautical miles more range ³⁸⁴⁾.”

Aerodynamics do play an important role here, but the main savings indicated above are achieved because of the powerplants. This is an important aspect when considering all composite aircraft where savings on fuel and noise are also (probably only) achieved because of the powerplants.  Which means these advantages can also be recognized with aluminum aircraft. The A380 proves that suburb aerodynamics can be achieved with aluminum-constructed wings.

I am a bit surprised – to be honest – about the giant plane/problems issue. This is definitely not intended to be misleading in any way. The book mentions that the composite structure was a success, as you noted in your comment. It is, however, difficult to deny that the past and present issues with the A380 are largely caused by the enormous scaling, especially with regards to the present issues of ramp-up.  The problems with the wiring would not have been the major issue that it was, and would have been far easier to solve, on a smaller and more traditionally sized aircraft.  It was the size of the A380 that exacerbated the wiring problem to begin with, and then made it such a herculean task to resolve.

The book is not intended to generate scandal; however, it details what I believe to be scandalous behavior with regards to certain issues, but is nowhere cited as such. This does not involve the A380 as a structure, but all-composite aircraft. My only interest is safety, and too many lives have been lost in the past because of ignorance – as discussed in chapter 2.  I see the same patterns being repeated in the industry that cause problems in the past with certain aircraft, and which resulted in unnecessary loss of lives.

I assume that you did read the version on the web. When you download the sections as PDF on ’sex and showers’ you will see that these are in small print – and as such are intended to be ‘entertaining’, but with an underlying message/warning. It appears my humor does not come through here and I will give ‘the obvious joke’ some thought and possibly revise the pitch of the message. Regardless, I appreciate the remark and perspective, but find here a comment – in small print – I received from another source:

You piece about the Singapore  A380 reminds me of a story we heard at the RR Heritage Trust in a lecture by a retired Concorde Captain (presumably they are all retired now?) from BA on his experiences. (He was also relative of a family member who held the World’s Air Speed Record with the Supermarine 6B in the 1930’s – with the Rolls- Royce ‘R’ Engine – the engine which held every World Record  - Air, Land and Water from 1930 until 1939 when record breaking was interrupted – this fact not widely reported).

I digress, – at Mach 2.0 somewhere over the Atlantic en route from  JFK to LHR his reverie was interrupted by the Purser to report that inappropriate behaviour was taking place in the forward toilet with a request for guidance. Were both sexes involved? – Yes. Were both of an appropriate age? – yes. Are other passengers complaining? – No. Is there a queue for the  other facilities? – no. Well let them finish and when they emerge present the lady involved with a bottle of Champagne and invite  her to join me on the flight deck for the landing at LHR. After landing, during which no comment about previous behaviour was made the lady thanked the Captain profusely with ‘Thank You ,Captain for the ride of my life’. Apparently the cpouple had met in the departure lounge with some time before departure and had then found themselves in seats A1 and A2!

Having said that, I am a bit disappointed that you blame Emirates for the stupidity, as only Airbus is to blame – really scandalous, to use your terminology - as I have no doubt that their sales reps overruled sound engineering principles.  This was bound to happen. The ‘fiction’ as I wrote it is not the true version since the plane was apparently on a test flight when it happened. I took the liberty to write it this way (in small print). But looking at it now the first paragraph of this small print section should be ‘large print’. (I wonder whether somebody is going to react on the story of Fred in chapter 3.)

You are correct with regards to AA587. Discussing this very sensitive issue with people closely involved, I’ve since decided on a compromise.

Again, thanks again for your comments and insights.  I would appreciate more of the same.

Best regards,

Hans.

ORIGINAL COMMENT

I’m not qualified to comment on the engineering aspects, but I think some other sections could be improved:

“The target weight had been exceeded by some 5,500 kg (~12,000 lbs) – the equivalent of 55 passengers – regardless enormous effort, but the composed structure was a success and still saves considerable weight – it would have been impossible to fly the A380 without composites”

Comparing the weight to equivalent passengers is useless. Extra weight primarily causes problems for cargo and range. Especially if the MTOW is raised, range will be the only problem. It is also worth mentioning that in this case Airbus delivered on fuel burn *despite* being overweight, even if your point is about composites – not every aspect needs to succeed at exactly 100%.

This should be kept in mind for future models as well: despite being above target weight on the XWB, Airbus already reduced engine thrust requirements once, and then raised them to be either the same or still lower depending on model. This means that low speed aerodynamics are overperforming. The same may apply to the 787, especially if some of that extra weight has been put into a more aerodynamically efficient structure.

I would compare weights in %. 5500 kg means nothing to me given the size of the aircraft, and the other aircraft aren’t even the same size as each other, let alone the A380.

The wiring problem is indeed interesting, but your title should make it clear that the problem wasn’t with the aircraft itself, let alone composites (”A380 – a giant airplane causing giant problems” – MISLEADING given your book’s topic).

Your description of the other problems borders on scandal seeking: “However, soon the A380 disappointed the world at large. In a shock announcement Singapore Airlines warned that when you have the privilege to share one of the private cabins in front of the plane provided with airborne double bed with your secretary, inappropriate activity is not allowed for.”

Disappointed the world at large? Really? Because one airline says you’re not allowed to have sex in its luxurious beds? Come on. Not only is being too silent a simple “problem” that can be remedied in future models, but everyone will just get around it by having sex quietly. Turn this paragraph into an (more?) obvious joke and it’ll be good.

The shower incident is more interesting, but it was Emirates who were stupid enough to want showers. Even if Airbus custom designed the system itself and failed, that’s still unrelated to the success of the A380 program or composites. Besides, how does this support the point you’re making? The cabin section was flooded of all things, but the aircraft still landed safely and needed relatively little maintenance based on the downtime. Seems to me that’s a good thing!

(Had the aircraft crashed due to the nude muslim woman hindering male help, by the way, that would be an excellent Darwin award candidate .

Your comment about AA587 is downright stupid: “The structure fulfilled its duty because the vertical tail has been loaded above ultimate, i.e. outside the certified load envelope, but it might be speculated how a structure out of aluminium reinforced composite would have behaved.” Quite obviously imho, a different material would have had a different weight, but still be designed to 150% in order to minimize it and also failed. If you have more insight into this than I do, explain what you mean.

The A300 doesn’t have flight envelope protection anyway, making this argument pointless

The Boeing Co. announced Tuesday it has agreed to buy a facility of Vought Aircraft Industries for $580 million in cash, in addition to the release of an undisclosed amount of debt. “Integrating this facility and its talented employees into Boeing will strengthen the 787 program by enabling us to accelerate productivity and efficiency improvements as we move toward production ramp-up”, said Scott Carson, president and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes. “In addition, it will bolster our capability to develop and produce large composite structures that will contribute to the advancement of this critical technology.”

Did Boeing have a choice? Vought has been a bottleneck – if not a pain in the neck – for Boeing from day one of the 787 Dreamliner project. In 2000 Northrop Grumman sold for $843 million its commercial jet-structures operation that made, amongst others fuselages for the 747, to the Carlyle Group, an investment firm headed by former Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci. The company was renamed Vought Aircraft and in 2003 Boeing assigned to Alenia and Vought the fabrication of most of the composite fuselage barrel sections for the 787, including detailed design work. Vought soon ran into problems with composites – including the detailed design work. To cure the huge barrel sections they were responsible for fabricating, they had to construct and build the largest autoclave system in the world.

AIT (Advanced Integration Technology) served as ‘systems superintegrator’, an idea pushed by Boeing that was supposed to bring together the component subsystems into one integrated and uniform system. This included the fabrication of the large shape rings, but AIT’s Canadian machine shop had difficulty maintaining the shape of the rings. They soon became desperate and  according to a foreman for the machine shop that handled some of AIT’s work, “They were running around with fire in their eyes, looking to do something without a contract, without a purchase order, just anyone who could try to fix this for them”. They told us “You can fudge here, you can fudge there….they had us do all kinds of hocus pocus, and it still didn’t fit”. Four months went by and even as other major Boeing suppliers began production the AIT cylinders were still traveling back and forth to the company’s Canadian shop. When the shape rings still did not fit, the Puget Sound company stopped accepting the work. “It looked like a big, giant, multimillion-dollar disaster well on its way to happening”….“AIT is putting Vought in a major bind”.

Another incident involved an inspector of Janicki who made the moulds and left a wooden crate inside an autoclave, “First the mould, then the fuselage section caught fire”. At the next regular Thursday meeting, the 787’s project executive and head of the 787 Dreamliner program, Mike Bair, began his report with bad news: “We had a little campfire last night”. Everything was ruined.  In June of 2007 Ted Perdue, the vice president responsible for the 787 program at Vought, was fired when the company had to acknowledge that the program faced “ongoing schedule slippage” as a result of obtaining parts it was supposed to install before shipping fuselage sections to Everett, Washington. Two months later Vought’s CEO, Elmer Doty, had to admit financial and logistical problems. “Facing a cash crunch”, Vought was now the weak – or weakest – link in the program.

A first delay of three months was announced by Boeing in September of 2007. Then out of the blue came a second delay already the next month, which was followed with what seemed like regularity a third delay in January 2008, and then a fourth delay April next. Who was to bear the blame? Too late as the by now also ousted  Mike Bair came to the conclusion that Boeing should build its next plane differently. He proposed that instead of relying on the globe-spanning supply chain that caused the Dreamliner program’s  problems - “Some of these guys we won’t use again” – Boeing should instead concentrate major partner factories at a single manufacturing supersite. Having the major suppliers all located in one geographic location would facilitate far better coordination and communications.

Boeing eventually announced they would oversee development at Vought and agreed in March of 2008 to buy Vought’s stake in its venture with Alenia that assembled sections of the new 787 Dreamliner, “A move that may help the company untangle the production delays dogging its best-selling plane and will give Boeing “more influence” over the four sections of the fuselage that are assembled at the plant in North Charleston, S.C.” From now on “Boeing and ex-Boeing managers were calling the shots and leading the turnaround”. But even that move could not staunch the problems for in  July of 2008 Vought had to halt production after a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) audit found lax manufacturing procedures that could result in damage to the aircraft sections that it was manufacturing. Vought finally started training sessions to teach “the high number of workers there who never worked on airplanes before” to clean up their substandard practices and maintain better production order because “Something as small as a stray bolt could potentially knock out a crucial wire or hydraulic line”.

Working hard to get things moving properly in South Carolina, Vought was now confronted with the machinists  strike in Seattle in September of 2008. This slowed production at Vought to a standstill. When problems with fasteners surfaced again and the fifth delay had to be announced December 2008, Vought was quick to remark that, “the problem was caused by Boeing engineers”, but they had to face the reality that “production lines were now likely to remain largely idle into the next year”. By now Boeing had become a pain in the neck to Vought: “It feels like we are tearing apart our work force”, Joy Romero, Vought’s vice president for the 787 program and head of the Charleston facility, said in an interview. “Our employees were starting to get the learning curve going. We were starting to make progress”.

Then, a shock announcement, Boeing had to announce a sixth delay. First test fight of the 787 would be delayed indefinitely, just days before the planned date of June 30, “787 ground tests continued before the entire test fleet went into a holding pattern”, and within two weeks Boeing agreed to buy Vought, and had to pay a bit more than $580 million. The undisclosed amount of debt involved $422 million in payments that Boeing had advanced to Vought, bringing the total purchase cost to an even $1B.  Did Boeing have a choice and does Boeing have a choice when other partners choose to follow Vought?

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 – 1860)

‘An Impossible Dream’ goes through stage one at the moment but will reach stage three sooner than later. For many it is still difficult to believe that civil aircraft can’t be built all-composite; that is, some 80% out of composites by volume including the complete skin. For those familiar with materials science this all-composite approach has been incomprehensible from the start. This could only end in failure. One can only wonder why so many scientists involved themselves with these projects and even came to the defense. Most worrisome is that the scientific community kept silent – if not totally silent – when developments unfolded, not to mention the press. But soon enough we will read different stories and experts will arise from nowhere. It happened before, far too often actually, just read the appendices in my book about the Comet, Concorde and the Columbia in particular (can de downloaded on the right). May be this time disaster can be avoided. It appears to be extremely difficult to warn people beforehand, that is, to have the courage to come forward and present a different view. In this case to focus on the development of composed aircraft for which the A380 is paving the way, where aluminium reinforced composites will play key role together with monolithic aluminium and titanium with plain composites for the large indoor primary structures like wing box and so on. Let me tell about a project I got involved with a long time ago, nothing to do with aviation, but involved Schopenhauer.

In the 1970’s the Saudi Arabian Government decided to build a 15-mile bridge in the Gulf that would connect the Island of Bahrain with the Saudi mainland. Very badly advised they chose steel construction. A contractor familiar with the harsh conditions in this region tried his luck and tendered an alternative design in concrete. Unexpectedly the Saudis chose this design, advised by the World Bank who had teamed up a group of experts who studied and further specified the concrete design. Soon the contract was signed and preparations started, everybody was very excited. However, when I studied the new specifications I soon found that the experts were apparently not all that familiar with extreme Gulf conditions and how these affect concrete. To me fell the pleasure to inform the contractor that with these specifications, the first part of the bridge would have deteriorated and collapsed before the last mile was constructed. That’s when I learned about Schopenhauer. First ridiculed, then somebody on the board who knew me better got a bit nervous but he was violently opposed. He did not give up and soon I was given the opportunity to present my case to the board when everybody realized that something drastic had to be done. One piece of advice, do never step forward when you do not have a good alternative in mind, preferably very simple. I had one and that paved the way for the stage of self-evidence.

Now came the difficult part. I had to convince the World Bank, where renowned and undoubtedly very well paid experts had to admit that they were wrong. We realized that would never work – would be violently opposed – and take far too much time. So, we chose to put forward the know-how and unique expertise we had gained over the past years, working in Saudi Arabia, and to talk about new developments and insights and so on. These experts knew very well that what I proposed was not that new at all, actually a rather simple conservative approach, but this way reputations were saved and soon everybody was happy to agree to my modest proposal to take a completely different approach. Although cheaper, the Saudis were happy to pay for the extra costs, substantial really, leave that to the contractor. The bridge was opened to the public in 1982. And for me, I am proud to tell you that the King Fahd Causeway – shown at the top of this page – is still in very good condition. But things could still have gone wrong. When we negotiated with the Saudis about the guarantee terms for durability somebody came up with a proposal to introduce plastic in the construction. More on that in ‘Bridge in the desert’ that you can download at the right (dreamblog appendices).

]]> http://www.lonelyscientist.com/?feed=rss2&p=436 0 http://www.lonelyscientist.com/?p=1 http://www.lonelyscientist.com/?p=1#comments Tue, 09 Jun 2009 18:44:07 +0000 Hans van der Zanden http://www.lonelyscientist.com/?p=1 o
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‘An Impossible Dream’ – will be published later this year. Draft text of the book is here presented for comment. Copyright applies.

About all composite aircrafts.
‘An Impossible Dream’ presents an in depth review of the application of plastic composites in aircraft, in particular all-composite aircraft presently developed by Boeing – 787 Dreamliner – and by Airbus – A350 XWB. Composites do not provide the expected weight savings and the safety of all-composite aircraft can be seriously questioned. These aircraft will never attain the safety standards set by aluminum aircraft – not even near. It is therefore difficult to understand why Boeing and Airbus engage themselves with such projects. The book presents a detailed review of the development of these aircraft, reflects on history and discusses the pros and cons of composites in some detail – an alternative approach is put forward.

Introduction

1. Aiming for complete control of the market
About an entertaining relationship

2. Lessons from history
About ignorance

3. Front runner
About Dreamliner 787

4. In comfortable second position
About A350

5. Pro and con and so on
About composites

6. Not suitable
About damage tolerance

7. All things considered
About aluminium reinforced composites

All composite anatomy

References

Appendix – Comet accident

Appendix – Concorde accident

Appendix – Columbia accident