EADS Global Website - Breakthroughs in aircraft composites production

EADS Innovation Works’ uniaxial braiding is using traditional braiding technology from the textile industry for a new means of producing composite supporting frames in aircraft fuselages. Developed in cooperation with Germany’s SGL Kümpers, the braided frames are manufactured in a quasi-endless process, using a highly automated circular machine that is sized to the same diameter as the aircraft’s fuselage.

This automated pre-form production line, which is based on an existing SGL Kümpers production unit, enables higher volume and lower cost production, while the uniaxial braiding process developed by EADS Innovation Works improves the carbon fibres’ compressive strength to provide significantly better mechanical properties and additional weight savings.

In their two-year braided frames project, Innovation Works and SGL Kümpers created an automated pre-form production line, which has been installed at the CFK Nord research centre in Stade, Germany, for evaluation in the production of such aircraft as the A350 XWB and next-generation Airbus jetliners. The braided frames concept received two prestigious awards in 2010 that acknowledged the uniqueness of this concept and recognised the exemplary way this project brought together researchers, material suppliers and machines.

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The uniaxial braiding process has already received industry recogniition in the form of the 2010 JEC Innovation Award for Automation.

More integration in 'one-shot' processes

In a separate project, EADS Innovation Works is also working with Airbus, Eurocopter and Premium Aerotech to advance composite aircraft production by fabricating a complex fuselage barrel section – complete with its integrated stringers, local reinforcements and window frames – in a single production step. This is also known as a 'one-shot' process, using the EADS-patented Vacuum Assisted Process (VAP®).

This project, called NEXICOS (Next Generation of Integrated Composite Aerospace Structure), was created to demonstrate the merits of such an integrated approach for use with future aircraft and helicopters in applying the VAP® technology, which consists of injecting resin in dry fibre preforms. The robustness of this technology results in fuselage components that would be less expensive to manufacture, easier to produce, with less energy required to build, and lighter in weight due to the integrated design that requires fewer fasteners and an optimised fibre architecture.

NEXICOS resulted in the production of a demonstration fuselage section with a length of three metres and a height of 2.8 metres, which validated the expected benefits from this production approach.