FEATURE

Cathay Pacific Airways has ordered 30 A350 XWB long range aircraft. (Picture © Airbus S.A.S./computer rendering by Fixion.)

Airbus A350 XWB

update
A350 XWB (extra wide body), the aircraft that Airbus Industrie did not
want to build, is now visibly taking shape, propelled by fully committed
engineering and management teams within Airbus itself and throughout
its supply chain. George Marsh reviews the project so far.

I
n responding to Boeing’s radical B787
Dreamliner, Airbus first hoped it could
get away with an upgraded develop-
ment of its established A330 twin, but
this concept cut little ice with potential
customers so the European company had
to think again. Ultimately, it put forward an
altogether new aircraft, gaining competitive
edge by giving it a wider fuselage than that
of the B787 (hence ‘XWB’).
Airbus leaders had to backtrack on their
previous assertions that Boeing was foolish
to adopt a reinforced plastic fuselage for
its Dreamliner. Plastic fuselages are an
undoubted challenge because previous
commercial passenger jet fuselages have
been metal and no-one knew how best
to fabricate a large composite pressure
vessel that has to accommodate hundreds
of passengers. Nor was it clear how
such a plastic fuselage would behave in
service. Unknowns range from the likely
effects of fatigue on a structure subject to
repeated thermal and pressure cycles, to
detection of damage in composites and
subsequent repairability.
Yet, stung by Boeing’s bold adoption
of a predominantly composite airframe,
including the fuselage, Airbus has
followed suit, notably specifying reinforced
plastics for its wide ovoid fuselage as
well as wings, empennage and other
primary aerostructure. In fact, the billed
53% composite content of the A350
slightly trumps the 50% of the B787. The
European contender is 53% composite,
19% aluminium-lithium, 14% titanium, 6%
steel and 8% other materials.
Of course, operators are not interested in
competition around plastic content for its
own sake, but are keen to have the weight
and performance benefits that composites
can bring. Reassured that Airbus has
recovered from its wrong-footing by Boeing,
35 customers have (at time of writing)
ordered 573 A350 XWBs. (Airbus claims
this number of firm orders and another
80 commitments.) Something around 600
copies is a creditable tally given that the
aircraft was officially launched in 2006, more
than three years after the B787.

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Composites advantage
Airbus believes it has advantages in the
composites arena. For a start, while Boeing
has had to make a large jump from barely
10% composites content in its B777 airliner
to the B787’s 50% figure, Airbus was an
early composites adopter and has gained
expertise while progressively adding fairings,
nacelles, empennages, control surfaces and
wings to its composite structures port-
folio. It now has extensive experience of
reinforced plastics fabrication and service
behaviour, while composites engineers on
the A350 programme benefit also from
the 15% plastic content in the Airbus A380
‘superjumbo’. Admittedly, Airbus might still
have preferred to maintain its more incre-
mental approach to composites adoption
but, goaded by its competitor, it is now fully
committed to the plastic fuselage revolu-
tion. Although low-weight metal solutions,
primarily aluminium/lithium alloy and metal/
composite hybrids such as GLARE, were
considered, composites won out because of
the prospects for greater integration, fewer
parts and fasteners, lower maintenance and,
it seems, the favourable attitude of airlines
to the precedent set by Boeing.
Paradoxically, the European planemaker
gains from not being the leader in this
particular airframe race since it can learn
much from the problems experienced by
Boeing that have led to a likely three-year
delay in first deliveries of B787s. Although
the A350 programme is facing delays
of its own, so far these are of the order
of months rather than years. With first
deliveries and service entry likely in 2014,
the new Airbus should not be nearly as
far behind its competitor in terms of its
availability as was once anticipated.
Broadly, the A350 family will comprise three
aircraft sizes; the A350-800, A350-900 and
A350-1000 designed variously to carry 270 to
350 passengers (up to 400+ in the highest-
density configuration). The aircraft was
conceived as an A330/340 replacement and
will compete with larger variants of Boeing’s
new B787 and its existing B777 long-range
widebody twin. All A350s will have a range
in excess of 8,000 nautical miles. The variants
will share a largely common wing design and
wing span though the -1000 model will have
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a 4% larger wing area, achieved by extending
the trailing section aft.
Intensive development
An intensive development effort has
achieved significant milestones. One, reached
in December 2008, was Maturity Gate 5, the
point at which the aircraft configuration is
considered fully defined. MG5 cleared the
way for detailed design of components
and enabled production of jigs and tooling
to commence for long-lead items. This is
crucial in the case of composites, for which
production requires early commitments to
tool manufacturers. Airbus regularly updates
its data to these suppliers and many of the
required tools are now available. The Maturity
A milestone, which encompasses MG5 and
earlier gates, was followed last year by Matu-
rity B, by which point all design teams had
finalised their designs.
Today the A350 XWB is progressing steadily
from the design and development phase
towards production. Airbus has assembled
a detailed digital model of the aircraft for
use as a common reference for compo-
nent manufacture by its own sites and
its suppliers. Rather than rely too much
on this, however, the airframer has also
implemented a demonstrator programme
under which a physical mock-ups of the
fuselage, wing and other major structures
are being produced. A350 programme head
Didier Evrard describes this activity as an
essential ‘bridge between the digital model
and the real world,’ important for validating
Manufacture of the A350 XWB lower wing shells commenced in August 2010 at Illescas in Spain.
(Picture © Airbus S.A.S.)
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2010
FEATURE
composite production processes as manu-
facture ramps up towards the 10 aircraft per
month rate targeted.
A modified production strategy for the A350
sees Airbus relying on a select group of Tier 1
supplier/partners chosen for their ability to
shoulder full responsibility for delivering large
pre-assemblies that are complete and ready
for assembly into the final aircraft. It has
not gone quite as far down the dispersed
outsourcing track as Boeing first aimed to do
and, by maintaining closer supervision within
its partnership arrangements, hopes to avoid
the supply chain pitfalls that have afflicted
the Dreamliner programme.
The biggest difference in approach between
the airframers, however, is that related to
fuselage manufacture. Whereas Boeing
is producing the B787 fuselage in large
monolithic tape-wound barrel sections that
are subsequently joined, Airbus has opted to
clothe a pre-fabricated fuselage skeleton with
large carbon fibre composite panels. This less
radical solution reduces risk, says Airbus, while
also having the advantage that panel proper-
ties can be optimised to their locations in the
fuselage (whether crown, belly or sides) with
resultant weight saving. Other benefits include
easier handling, less expensive autoclaves
and the fact that having a panel fail at post-
manufacture inspection for any reason is less
of a setback than losing a complete barrel.
Stringers and most frames are of carbon,
though certain frames in high load areas are
titanium so that crashworthiness criteria can
be met. Airbus reversed an earlier decision to
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GKN Aerospace’s rear spar for the A350 XWB demonstrator wing.
use metal stringers in favour of co-curing
carbon stringers within the skin panels. This
reduces the number of separately fabricated
parts and fasteners. Crossbeams, however,
are of aluminium-lithium.
The nose section is only partly composite,
metal having been retained because the
one-piece carbon fibre structure that
had earlier been considered would have
required titanium reinforcement to meet
bird strike requirements, making it uncom-
petitive on cost.
Airbus Hamburg is responsible for fuselage
development and final assembly, with an
associate plant at nearby Stade producing
some carbon fibre panels. Centre fuselage
build-up takes place at the Aerolia (formerly
Airbus) site in Saint-Nazaire, France, using
upper and lower shells provided by Spirit
AeroSystems Inc in North Carolina, USA.
Wings are produced mainly in the UK (Filton
and Broughton), while the centre wing
box is manufactured at Nantes in France.
However, Spirit AeroSystems is responsible
for the wing fixed leading edge including
the front wing spar, a 105 ft long composite
structure weighing some 2000 lb. Tail-
plane (empennage) components are being
produced by Airbus Spain and Germany,
and in China. Final assembly of the aircraft
will take place in Toulouse, France.
Many of the production facilities, including
those for composites, are new. A €150
million fuselage assembly hangar at
22 REINFORCEDplastics NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2010
Hamburg, with a production area of some
15 000 m2, was completed this summer.
At a ceremony in July a topping out
wreath decorated with carbon fibre was
a symbolically appropriate part of the
occasion. A new composite production
facility at Stade currently has a workforce
of about 100, but this is expected to grow
to nearer 500 as production builds up to
full rate. In July, Spirit AeroSystems formally
opened a new 46 500 m2 composite
manufacturing facility in Kinston, North
Carolina, after a two-year construction
phase. By now, some 200 people there
are engaged on Airbus work, a tally that is
expected to rise to about 700 over the next
few years.
The A350 has a wing and centre wing
box that are more extensively composite
(about 80%) than on previous Airbus
aircraft and the production arrangements
reflect this. With majority production
of the wings taking place in the UK,
Airbus has expanded its capability at
Broughton, North Wales, with a new
46 000 m2 factory dedicated to A350
XWB wing production. Wing design
and engineering take place at the
Airbus UK site at Filton, Bristol.
Broughton is due to commence assembly
of the first wing about now. According to
Brian Fleet, head of the wing programme,
the British operations had to fight hard to
keep wing production in the UK and have
committed to efficiency improvements
aimed at cutting cost by around 30%.
Parts of the wing are manufactured else-
where. The role of Spirit AeroSystems in
producing the fixed portion of the forward
part of the wing, including the forward
spar, has already been mentioned. GKN
Aerospace has invested substantially in the
site at Filton that it acquired from Airbus in
2008. Here, co-located with the Airbus wing
design activity, it is setting up to produce
the entire portion of the wing aft of and
including the rear spar, except the wing
skins which are being manufactured in
mainland Europe and certain trailing edge
components being made by GE Aviation at
Hamble near Southampton in the UK.
Dozens of organisations around the world
are involved in the supply chain. Aerolia,
the French aerostructures specialist that
emerged out of Airbus in 2009, is respon-
sible for A350 nose and fuselage structures
in both metal and composite, and has
invested €160 million in a new composites
facility. Its own supply chain tail includes
Corse Composites (landing gear doors),
Latecoere (nose fairing), plus a number of
design associates. In Germany, Premium
Aerotec, a similarly semi-autonomous
EADS subsidiary, is producing much of
the forward fuselage plus parts of the aft
fuselage including the side shells, floor grid
and aft pressure bulkhead. Its investment of
some €360 million in the programme has
included €6.5 million on a new 25 m long
by 8 m high South Korea-built autoclave
weighing 260 tonnes. This is installed at a
new production hall at Augsberg.
Figeac Aero, also in France, is to manu-
facture floor sections under sub-contract
to Aerolia while FACC AG, the Austrian
company now majority owned by the Xian
Aircraft Industry Group, has a contract to
produce blended winglets along with a
number of other A350 components. The
Duqueine Group, France, is to fabricate
fuselage frames for Premium Aerotec and
Aerolia, plus window frames for Spirit
AeroSystems. Frame production work has
also gone to Alliant Techsystems (ATK) in
the United States, along with manufacture
of fuselage stringers. ATK recently spent
€175 million on expanding its composite
production facilities.
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China’s Avicopter, one of the country’s
composite leaders, has a joint venture (JV)
with Airbus parent EADS to produce A350
rudders in a new factory at the Harbin Hafei
Airbus Composite Manufacturing Centre. This
JV is also to produce A350 elevators, under
contract to Aernnova Aerospace in Spain.
Airbus and China have an understanding that
5% of the A350’s airframe should be built in
China, a commitment that was fully fulfilled
with the recent allocation of wing spoiler
and droop panel manufacture to Chinese
companies. Another EADS joint venture is
that with German company SGL to produce
fuselage frames. Goodrich Corporation is to
supply composite engine nacelles and thrust
reversers. Korean Air Aerospace Division is to
fabricate three of the aircraft’s safety-critical
composite doors.
Automating composite production has
engaged a number of suppliers including:
MAG Industrial Automation Systems,
provider of Viper automated fibre placement
machines used at several production sites;
M Torres, supplier of gantry-style automated
tape laying, fibre placement and inspec-
tion machines; Flow International, manu-
facturer of machine tools for composites,
including abrasive waterjet units; plus Aim
Engineering and several other jig and tool
specialists. Hexcel Composites expects to
make billions of dollars over the life of the
programme by providing composite mate-
rials, principally its HexPly toughened epoxy
product incorporating intermediate modulus
carbon fibre. Two years ago Hexcel opened
a carbon fibre production plant at Illescas
near Toledo, Spain, fibre from which goes to
a partner plant in nearby Paria for conver-
sion into prepreg.
Final aircraft assembly will take place in
Toulouse where a new A350 XWB assembly
unit is being built close to an existing
A330/340 production line at a cost of
€140 million. The 7.4 hectare assembly
area, nearing completion after almost two
years of construction, has impressive ‘green’
credentials. There is a high proportion of
natural lighting, and with 27 000 m2 of
photovoltaic roofing and an advanced
energy management system, the site is
expected to generate over half of its energy.
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Premium Aerotec has started manufacturing fuselage panels for the A350 XWB, using MAG tape laying machines.
(Picture © Premium AEROTEC GmbH.)
Use of parallel workflow lines is expected to
enable up to ten A350s to be produced per
month eventually.
Logistics
As with the Dreamliner, A350 production
involves considerable movement of large
aerostructures. Fuselage items manufac-
tured in North Carolina will be shipped
across the Atlantic to be received at a
new Spirit facility in Saint-Nazaire and
assembled there into the full 65 ft by 20 ft
centre fuselage frame section, which next
goes to Hamburg for full fuselage integra-
tion. These and other fuselage sections
completed at Saint-Nazaire are transported
by Beluga – an Airbus A300 modified to
carry outsized cargoes in its large whale-
like cargo belly – to either Hamburg or
Toulouse. Since Saint-Nazaire, Hamburg and
Toulouse all have waterside access, items
may optionally be shipped by sea.
Spirit AeroSystems will despatch its wing
contribution to its operation in Prestwick,
Scotland, for integration into the wing
leading section before the latter is trans-
ported to the final assembly site. The main
body of the wing, complete with the trailing
edge portion, is flown from the wing
assembly site at Broughton, UK, to Toulouse
as a final assembly item.
Centre wing boxes are transferred from
Nantes to Saint-Nazaire for integration.
Other items are transported to European
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2010
FEATURE
plants from as far afield as the United
States, Korea, Malaysia and China.
‘Becoming real’
A key production milestone achieved at
Nantes in December 2009 prompted Didier
Evrard to declare, “the A350XWB is becoming
real!” This happened when work on the centre
wing box (CWB) began with the fabrication
of a large carbon composite panel. The panel,
with its 36 m2 surface area, was formed using
a new state-of-the-art tape laying machine
and is the largest ‘monobloc’ composite panel
ever manufactured at Nantes. Subsequently,
tooling for the keel beam was commissioned
in Nantes in June. This is a large item that
enables the lower shell of the keel beam and
the lower panel of the centre fuselage to be
laid up in one go. Assembly of the first keel
beam is due to start about now.
At Stade, in August, work began on one of
the largest carbon fibre reinforced plastic
(CFRP) items on the aircraft – a 31.6 m
by 5.6 m upper wing shell. A massive
autoclave facility installed at the plant can
accommodate and cure two of these shells
simultaneously. Airbus’ use for the first time
of automated tape laying to produce this
shell is aimed at ensuring speedy produc-
tion, and consistent high product quality.
In September, Airbus in Spain unveiled an
even larger piece of wing skin at its Advanced
Composites Centre in Illescas. The 32 m by
7 m lower wing cover, a double-curvature
item fabricated to precise tolerances, is one of
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The second large test composite fuselage section for the A350 XWB was completed in Hamburg, Germany, in 2009.
(Picture © Airbus/M. Lindner.)
the biggest CFRP components ever built by
the aeronautical industry.
Meanwhile in the UK, GKN Aerospace engi-
neers early this year fabricated and evaluated
their first composite wing spar, intended for
the A350 wing box demonstrator. Preparations
are now being finalised at Filton for series
production of spars using automated fibre
placement and other automated techniques.
At the same time, 11 Airbus and associated
sites in Germany, France and Spain have
been working together to produce a demon-
strator fuselage. Recently the programme
completed a second large test fuselage
section (the parallel part of the fuselage is
produced in three sections). The 18 m long
section, with a diameter of more than 6 m,
served to develop and validate the compete
process chain, from the manufacture of
individual panels, frames and clips to shell
assembly, section assembly and production
of long circumferential joints. Airbus has
also had to develop and refine methods for
producing fuselage frames, window frames,
fasteners and doors, including a hybrid
CFRP/titanium door structure being used for
the first time.
As well as establishing production proc-
esses, demonstrators are used to validate
the Electrical Structure Network (ESN), a
critical matter with composites since elec-
trical paths for lightning strikes have to be
engineered into the structure rather than
being freely available as in metals. This is
achieved on A350 fuselages by connecting
metal frames, aluminium strips attached to
composite frames, the metal floor grid etc
24 REINFORCEDplastics NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2010
together in a conductive network. (Boeing
is incorporating an electrically conducting
metal mesh within its B787 fuselage lay-up.)
Another vital aspect of fuselage evolution is
panel development. In September/October,
Airbus flight tested an A350 CFRP fuselage
panel on an A340 test aircraft, where it was
installed in place of a standard metal panel.
The 14 m2 panel, produced at Nantes, incor-
porates microphones so that technicians can
assess the panel’s acoustic behaviour when
combined with various insulation materials.
This is to determine to what extent acoustic
energy will be transmitted into the aircraft
through a stiff carbon structure, a matter that
is still in question. Fuselage sections equipped
with fully furnished cabins will be used for
assessing the acoustic characteristics of a full
composite fuselage. Production of panels is
commencing at Premium Aerotec, Aerolia and
other aerostructure partners.
Frames, too, are a particular composites focus.
Duqueine produced its first frame for Airbus’
demonstrator fuselage in January, using a
multiaxial prepreg bending process that it
developed in partnership with Airbus over the
previous two years. ATK Aerospace Structures
recently delivered its first composite stringers,
produced using its proprietary automated stiff-
ener forming system, and frames will follow.
Longer wait
Given what is, even for Airbus, a quantum
leap further into composites, it is perhaps
not surprising that the development
programme is slipping behind schedule. So
far the airframer has admitted to a delay of
about three months, forcing it to compress
the originally intended 15-month flight test
programme into 12 months in order to
meet early delivery commitments. Industry
analysts and sources within Airbus suggest
that the final delay will be greater than this.
Although manufacture of initial parts is now
under way, these are for the demonstrator
mock-up and parts for the first production
aircraft, MSN001, come next. Start of final
assembly of MSN001, the first A350-900,
has been pushed back from the second
quarter of 2011 to the third quarter, with
first flight projected for mid 2012. The
ensuing compressed flight test programme
will require five aircraft to amass 2,600 flight
hours before certification can be achieved.
The sixth aircraft manufactured will be the
first for customer delivery.
Airbus cites four main issues stretching the
development timescale: airframe sizing, the
electrical structure network, the wing root
join, and fuselage damage tolerance. Of
these, the first two are considered resolved
and progress on the other two is said to be
good. Didier Evrard admits that the decision
to push back fabrication is due to working
in so many areas with carbon fibre. He says
that, unlike with metal, it is not possible to
commit from a global finite element model
and that with composites ‘you only get one
chance.‘ He adds that the delays should
affect only the -900 variant. The smaller -800
should follow a year after the baseline -900,
and the largest -1000 a year after that.
In addition to evidence of slippage in
detailed engineering, sources within the
supply chain say that shipments of some
parts are up to six months late. Analysts
may well be justified in suggesting that the
first -900 delivery will not take place before
2014. Moreover, early aircraft are likely to
be overweight.
Even so, customers do not seem unduly
perturbed at present. Given the prospect
of an exceptionally light, largely plastic
low-maintenance long-range widebody
aircraft offering operating costs some 20%
lower than current-generation jets, they are
prepared to wait a little longer. ■
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