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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 |
