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South Yorkshire Engineers Win Top award

 
   

Rotherham-based engineering consultancy Bennett Associates has won a top award from the prestigious Institute of Materials for its contribution to the development of the Airbus A380 'super-jumbo', which is due to make its maiden flight next year.

The Institute awards its Gold Medal for important contributions to the industrial application of materials. This year it chose the team responsible for the manufacture of the top skins of the A380 wings, which will measure around 40 metres from wing-tip to fuselage. The aircraft will carry 555 passengers.

The process used to produce the four skins for each wing, known as creep age forming, had never been used before on this scale and would normally require a long time to develop, producing unacceptable delays in the A380 programme. The skins panels also had to be formed to very precise tolerances, and the accuracy of creep age forming on this scale was unknown.

Bennett Associates was appointed by Airbus UK to design the tooling and handling systems for the wing skins and project-manage their construction and installation at a new factory in North Wales. This equipment cost £7.7 million.

'A critical success factor in the development of an affordable creep age forming process and facility was the development and realisation of a rapidly adjustable tooling concept, with known thermal characteristics that were tuned to the capabilities of the process equipment', says the IoM's citation.

The four skin panels produced for each wing of the A380 are 23 metres to 33 metres long, up to 2.5 metres wide and from 5mm to 25 mm thick, with complex curvatures and variations in thickness. The first full set was successfully produced last year.

In addition to the Airbus project Bennetts have been involved in a number of other major projects, including the Channel Tunnel, the Gateshead Millennium Bridge, the Falkirk Wheel and a new lifting bridge near Canary Wharf, London.

August 2004

 
   
For more information, contact us on 01709-373782

Related links:
.Airbus A380 creep forming tools for wing skins
.Airbus A380 Takes Creep Forming to New Levels


M G Bennett and Associates Ltd is now part of the Atkins - the official engineering design services provider for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games Group
Atkins - the official engineering design services provider for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games
 

Managing Director Nick Cooper (left), Richard Burgess and John Wadsworth led the Airbus A380 team at Bennett Associates.
Managing Director Nick Cooper (left), Richard Burgess and John Wadsworth led the Airbus A380 team at Bennett Associates.

The Airbus A380 Super Jumbo
The Airbus A380 Super Jumbo