Defense Articles

AIRLINE INDUSTRY INFORMATION-(C)1997-2007 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTD

Swedish aircraft humidity control systems provider CTT Systems AB said on Monday (28 May) that it has received an evaluation order for an aircraft condensation elimination system from the Portuguese airline TAP.

The order covers a Zonal Drying System for installation in an Airbus A330-200 aircraft.

If the trial is successful TAP plans to install the Zonal Drying System in all of its aircraft.

CTT Systems, headquartered in Nykoping, Sweden, provides Zonal Drying Systems for eliminating condensation on the aircraft structure, and Cair Systems for controlling cabin humidity. The company is listed on the Nordic Exchange in Stockholm.

AIRLINE INDUSTRY INFORMATION-(C)1997-2007 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTD

Executives from Delta Air Lines (NYSE:DAL) and its wholly owned subsidiary Comair, a Delta Connection carrier, have said that Comair has been awarded 14 Bombardier CRJ-900 aircraft.

According to Comair the aircraft will be the first in its fleet to include a first-class cabin and will replace 14 of the regional carrier’s CRJ-100 50-seat aircraft.

The new CRJ-900 aircraft will have 12 first-class seats and 64 coach seats.

Comair is expected to take delivery of the new aircraft between August 2007 and February 2008. No financial details have been disclosed.

Surface Transforms (www.surface-transforms.com; Ellesmere Port, Cheshire) is one of the UK’s leading manufacturers of ‘next-generation’ carbon fiber reinforced ceramic composite materials (CRFCs). They are designed to replace traditional carbon-carbon products on aircraft by offering an improved product lifetime, thereby increasing the number of landings that can be performed between maintenance schedules. Its products can be found on rocket propulsion systems and as a replacement for conventional technical ceramics for use in body and vehicle armor. They can also be found on high-performance cars. Formed in 1992, Surface Transforms originated out of the Advanced Materials group of ICI when four former employees bought the intellectual property rights to the materials technology. Initially, and for quite a lengthy period of time afterwards, it served as a research and development company. Initial projects were funded programs that looked at various applications including aerospace and railway carriage braking. It even started to become involved in Formula One. However, the timing was unfortunate because the company initiated the project just at the time when the FIA, the sport’s governing body, was in the process of banning carbon ceramics on Grand Prix cars. Surface Transforms duly refocused its efforts on fitting its brakes to high-performance road cars.

As a result, Surface Transform’s System ST brakes can now be found on the Koenigsegg supercar as an option on the CCX, which was launched at last year’s Geneva Show and on the CCGT that was launched at this year’s show, the $600,00 Ascari A10, and a new supercar from Weber Sportcars. Altogether, System ST is now fitted to more than 15 different car platforms. Surface Transforms is also working in partnership with StopTech, a California based leader in balanced brake upgrades for production cars and production-based racecars, to promote the adoption of carbon ceramic brakes on high-performance cars in the U.S. market. An annual supply contract has not yet been signed, yet both companies forecast that in the aftermarket between 50 and 100 car sets will be required in the next 12 months. StopTech has placed the first production order and will soon be offering the System ST ceramic brake disc on selected vehicle offerings.

“Carbon ceramic brake technology was really brought to the market by three cars that were launched, utilizing the technology at a similar time–the Ferrari Enzo, Porsche Carrera GT and the Mercedes McLaren SLR–and Surface Transforms had the appropriate technology,” says Antoni Sznerch, Surface Transforms’ business development director. Unlike carbon-carbon brakes, carbon ceramics do not need to be hot to work, they work optimally from cold while offering significant weight saving over traditional iron rotors. They also have negligible wear in normal use. “The fundamental difference between the brake discs that are fitted to these three cars and Surface Transform’s technology is that they are manufactured using discontinuous carbon fiber, where our discs are made of continuous carbon fiber. This means that their mechanical integrity should be superior because the strength of carbon lies in the direction and length of the fiber.”

Surface Transforms manufactures and supplies 3D multi-directional carbon fiber and oxidized PAN (polyacrylonitrile) preforms to suit a variety of engineering applications. Carbon fiber preforms are mats of interwoven multi-directional carbon fibers and are the basic materials that Surface Transforms converts into ceramic brakes and discs using its patented technology. “By developing our discs and pads from our pad partner, we provide a balanced and high-performance complete friction couple,” says Sznerch. “We use what could be called a traditional nought/90 fiber orientation. However, our raw material is carbon fiber precursor which has 30% elongation in the fiber before it will break whereas carbon fiber only has 2%. This 30% elongation allows us to needle the fibers together so that we not only have the nought/90 orientation but also have the fiber in the Z direction through the material bundle and that is what binds the fibers together. It would be physically impossible to do this with traditional carbon and can only be done at the precursor stage. We convert the precursor to carbon fiber then we crack methane and convert the carbon to carbon-carbon.

“The final stage of manufacture is to convert the carbon-carbon to carbon silicon carbide. The carbon that we crack from methane infills around the fiber that is then converted to silicon carbide. In this way we end up with a carbon silicon carbide disc with good mechanical integrity. Because we machine our discs to shape as opposed to shaping them in a mould we have great flexibility in the design and dimensions of the disc.”

“We are now going through the phase of transforming an R&D company into a more commercial manufacturing one,” says Sznerch. “We are a materials technology company looking for commercial applications. The company philosophy and strategy is twofold. One is that we don’t see ourselves as a large volume manufacturer of automotive brake discs and are looking for licensed manufacturers for the long term. Aircraft brakes, currently, in the main are carbon-carbon–metal brakes are now less common on new aircraft–and we are looking to license our technology to carbon-carbon manufacturers. This has a good strategic fit because our siliconization process can be added onto the tail end of their existing process. A licensed automotive manufacturer will be a little bit different because it would need a more complete manufacturing package. However, we have intellectual property rights for the main core of three critical processes, starting with the raw material, how it’s put together, then the carbonization stage followed by the siliconization process.”

AIRLINE INDUSTRY INFORMATION-(C)1997-2007 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTD

Australian regional carrier QantasLink is to expand its Boeing 717-200 fleet as part of a renewed operating agreement with National Jet Systems (NJS).

The carrier will reportedly expand its fleet from eight to 11 aircraft.

The first of the three additional aircraft will commence operation in August 2007 and will be based in Perth, while route options for the other two aircraft, set to enter service in October 2007, are still being assessed.

AIRLINE INDUSTRY INFORMATION-(C)1997-2007 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTD

Canadian aircraft manufacturer Bombardier Aerospace has announced that Pinnacle Airlines Corp has entered into a contract for 15 Bombardier Q400 74-seat turboprop aircraft.

The deal also includes conditional orders for another 10 Q400 aircraft and options on an additional 20, Bombardier said.

Based on the list price of the Q400 aircraft, the value of the 15 firm ordered aircraft is approximately USD381m and this could increase to USD1.2bn, if all conditional orders and options are exercised.

The 15 aircraft will be assigned to Pinnacle’s wholly owned subsidiary Colgan Air Inc, which will operate the aircraft under the Continental Connection name primarily from the Continental Airlines hub at Newark Liberty International Airport, New Jersey.

AIRLINE INDUSTRY INFORMATION-(C)1997-2006 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTD

Japan’s Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd may build a second plant for components for the Boeing 787 Dreamliner.

According to the Nihon Keizai business newspaper, the company is considering the move in view of the solid orders for the aircraft. A second plant could be built by the fiscal year 2008/09.

AIRLINE INDUSTRY INFORMATION-(C)1997-2005 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTD

Boeing Co, the US aircraft manufacturer, has said that it has signed contracts with Chinese companies to supply parts until 2021.

According to Boeing the contracts are worth an estimated USD600m. Some of the parts supplied will be for the new 787 aircraft and the suppliers include Chengdu Aircraft Industrial (Group) Co Ltd and Hafei Aviation Industry Co Ltd, Reuters reported.

AIRLINE INDUSTRY INFORMATION-(C)1997-2005 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTD

A lawsuit has been filed against Boeing by three senior employees.

The employees claim that the aircraft manufacturer ignored numerous defective parts used in the construction of aircraft. According to the lawsuit, which was brought in March on behalf of the US government, Boeing allegedly ignored 2,000 defective parts that were used in 32 aircraft.

The three employees from the commercial aircraft division in Wichita said that the parts came from Ducommun Inc, California.

The lawsuit was made public last week as the US Justice Department completed an investigation into the case, The Associated Press reported. According to a court filing the allegedly defective parts were used for aircraft delivered to the US Air Force and Navy as well as to foreign military forces, including those of Australia, Italy, Japan and Turkey.

It was also reported that the lawsuit contends that the parts did not pass minimum Federal Aviation Administration safety requirements, and they were allegedly used on 737s, 747s, 757s and 767s that were made at the plant in Wichita and delivered from March 1998 through to November 2004.

AIRLINE INDUSTRY INFORMATION-(C)1997-2007 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTD

Ten pieces of wreckage have been found that clearly belong to the missing Adam Air Boeing 737-400 that disappeared on 1 January, according to Eddy Suyanto, the official heading the search.

The biggest part was found by a fisherman and seemed to be a tail stabiliser. Other parts that have been found include pieces of a wing, a life vest and seat tables. These items were recovered by residents, military and police both in the sea and on beaches near the town of Pare Pare, located on the west coast of Sulawesi island.

The Adam Air aircraft was on its way from Surabaya in eastern Java to Manado in northern Sulawesi when it disappeared in bad weather.

Search and rescue official Immal Yuhani has also said that two flight attendant seats were found on a beach, while Genot Hardianto, the chief of police at Pare Pare, said an ID card, a flare and a headrest had been found, Reuters reported.

According to Wahyu Supriantono, the chief of the Indonesian Plane Technicians group, the aircraft seemed to have crashed into the sea since a mid-air explosion would have sent fragments spreading over a wider area.

The Aircraft Research Association (ARA) in Bedford, England, is an independent, nonprofit research and development organization, originally set up in 1952 as a wind tunnel test center for the aircraft industry in the United Kingdom. Today, it provides confidential services in aerodynamic-related technologies for U.K. aircraft and aero engine industries, MoD and major aerospace firms from mainland Europe, the United States and further afield. The 150-strong company’s main strength lies in its ability to offer a range of aerodynamic services, including computational fluid dynamics to develop aerodynamic lines, the design and manufacture of scale aircraft models for wind tunnel testing and in-depth analysis of how these models actually perform. Models can be tested in their transonic wind tunnel at speeds from Mach 0.2 to 1.4.

ARA’s manufacturing operations are centered firmly around three large bed-type CNC mills (including one twin-spindle model), which produce these complex 3D model forms from solid. All these machines have recently been upgraded in terms of controls and drives and have had high speed heads fitted to optimize their performance.

Looking to further modernize its operations, the organization recently purchased machining Strategist CAM software from NC Graphics (Zionsville, Indiana). ARA was looking at a number of other CAM systems and had actually tried and tested several. So the final decision to purchase the software was based on the results of its capability to program a real job–a 300 m M2 section of a wing root that involved complex 3D forms and blended curved surfaces. This was completed at NC Graphics’ Cambridge, England, headquarters.

Working from an imported IGES file, the wing root form was programmed in less than 15 minutes and roughed out in just 3.5 hours. ARA watched the work in progress and was impressed, as it would have taken almost 2 days to program and rough out this component. During a further trial on-site at ARA, second-stage programming and machining of a special cryogenic model convinced Richard Sale, ARA’s project manager of design and manufacture, and his engineering team that machining Start egist was the CAM system ARA needed to streamline manufacturing routines.

Now that machining Strategist is being used at ARA to program the complex tool paths required for roughing of 1/30th scale models of various aircraft for wind tunnel testing, this CAM system has produced major benefits in terms of reduced programming time, higher metal removal, shorter lead times and extended tool life. Looking at specific components, the new system has already enabled ARA to reduce the time it takes to produce a pair of aircraft wings, (carved out of solid 1 m by 400 mm by 100 mm thick steel billets), from 14 to just 8 weeks. Metal removal rates have more than doubled, as machining is now carried out with 35 mm diameter Depo-style tooling at a depth of cut of 2 mm (formerly 1 mm) and a feed rate of 1 m/min. (formerly 750 mm/mm.). These forms are roughed out to within 1.2 mm of the final profile, compared with the previous allowance of 3 mm plus, reducing the amount of finishing work required.

Mr. Sale outlines the differences that machining Strategist has made to production operations. “Brought in to complement our existing CAM software, the system has had a big impact on the way we do things here now, releasing us from the ties of programming and machining routines, which were historically built up over the years. For we now have a new and more flexible way of programming such work, and this has enabled us to improve the efficiency with which we can rough out the complex 3D model forms required. Short learning curves have also proved to be a feature of the system, too.”

Quantifying the advantages of the new CAM system is not that straightforward, as each aircraft model is a one-off, presenting its own particular problems. However, Mr. Sale summed up the benefits of the software in general terms. “On average, we have cut the time it takes to generate tool paths by a factor of three. Machining cycles are now around 20 percent faster, tool life has been significantly extended and there is far less wear and tear on our CNC machines.”

Combined with other setup and workholding improvements, the introduction of machining Strategist will eventually help reduce typical lead times from 21 to about 14 weeks. At present, the company is about half way toward meeting this target. Although machining Strategist has only been in action at ARA for a short period of time, it has already improved the association’s capability, speed and efficiency on a range of different components. Such has been the software’s all-round performance that the first two systems have already paid for themselves.