Boeing unveils key new technology for the Dreamliner

[Rebel]

Boeing unveils key new technology for the Dreamliner
In its secretive Developmental Center, where nearly four decades
By JAMES WALLACE
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER AEROSPACE REPORTER

In its secretive Developmental Center, where nearly four decades ago the company built a wood, steel and aluminum mock-up of its planned supersonic transport, The Boeing Co. yesterday unveiled what it believes will be the real future of commercial aviation.

"This is a really significant event in the history of aviation," said Walt Gillette, the noted Boeing engineer who began his career the same year the SST mock-up was constructed in 1966.

"What you are seeing is our new baby, and this is the first one like it in the world," he told reporters.

Born in a high-pressure oven called an autoclave, the "baby" is 22 feet long and nearly 19 feet in diameter -- and made entirely of carbon-fiber composites.

It is the first full-scale test section of the 7E7 Dreamliner fuselage.
No one has ever manufactured a composite pressure vessel this size, Gillette said.

And there are bigger ones to come.
Using prototype tools and robots, Boeing and its 7E7 partners in Japan, Italy and the United States must perfect new manufacturing processes for the 7E7, which will be the first large commercial jetliner with a nearly all composite structure instead of traditional aluminum.

"With this first section, we have proved we can make it," said Deborah Limb, who leads Boeing's international team responsible for designing and building the 7E7 fuselage.

"It turned out just the way we had hoped," she added, "and now we know the concept works."

Seven more 7E7 test sections representing different parts of the plane will be manufactured this year at the Developmental Center, near Boeing Field.

Assembly of the first 7E7 is likely to occur in late 2006 or early 2007, with the jet entering airline service in the first half of 2008.

Fuselage sections of Boeing jetliners are numbered, and the same numbering system is used for the 7E7. This first barrel made at the Developmental Center is what's known as section 47, part of the fuselage that will be supplied by Texas-based Vought. It is the aft fuselage just before the tail structure.

Windows were cut in the composite structure where the plane's last rows of passengers will sit near door No. 4.

The barrel section came out of the autoclave just after Thanksgiving, after several months of developmental work.
A computer-controlled robot applies layers of carbon fiber material on a huge mold, which is then baked in an enormous autoclave.

An aluminum fuselage barrel would require several large pieces held together by thousands of rivets.

The composite fuselage barrel does not need rivets, because it is one big piece.

Gillette said Boeing and its partners decided to make section 47 first because it represented a more difficult challenge than some of the other 7E7 fuselage sections. That's because section 47 gets narrower just before the aft-pressure bulkhead, where it is joined to the tail section.

Gillette, who is vice president of 7E7 engineering and manufacturing, described this section as "highly curved." It will not be the biggest one-piece composite fuselage structure on the 7E7. That will be section 41, the forward fuselage and cockpit, which will be some 43 feet long.

Airbus has said Boeing is pushing composite technology too far in having an all-composite fuselage.

Boeing took the wraps off the fuselage barrel and invited reporters in for a look one week to the day before Airbus rolls out its first A380 superjumbo in France. The A380 will use more composites than previous jetliners, but not nearly as much as the 7E7.

"It is a matter of time before (Airbus engineers) come to the same conclusion," Gillette said of the benefits of an all-composite aircraft structure.

Composites do not corrode or fatigue like aluminum. And a composite structure is 15 percent to 20 percent lighter than the same structure made of aluminum.

Frank Statkus, Boeing's vice president of technology, tools and processes for the 7E7 program, joined Gillette at the Developmental Center event.

In an interview last year, he said Boeing had built its last aluminum airplane.

"If you want to be part of the future of commercial aviation, you better be able to do composites," he said yesterday.

More headlines and info from Everett, Georgetown/South Park.
P-I aerospace reporter James Wallace can be reached at 206-448-8040 or jameswallace@seattlepi.com

[North of You]

Two words: Beech Starship.

[twinpratts]

LMAO