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The Boeing Dreamliner 787 Could Be the Next Spruce Goose
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reddingofish
08/17/09

In reply to The Boeing Dreamliner 787 Could Be the Next Spruce Goose
Go ahead and blame the Italians.
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DeusExMach wonders what the hell happened to his star.
08/17/09

@reddingofish: Not only will I blame the Italians, but I'll do it in their own language.
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AceKolles
08/17/09

In reply to The Boeing Dreamliner 787 Could Be the Next Spruce Goose
I've worked on the diagonal braces for the 787. 25ft long carbon fiber tubes with titanium end fittings. I can assure you that the amount of research, and prototyping, that goes into each and every part of this plane is outrageously in depth. These braces cost almost $250k each, and I got to chop one in half so we could destroy it even further. Safety is the utmost importance, and Boeing adheres to this policy strictly.

I've worked with composites in the aerospace industry now for a few years, and I agree that these "wrinkles" do not reflect Boeing in any way, it reflects the work of the SUB sub contractor in Italy. For those of you who do not know how these panels are made, its a layering process using resin, sealers and carbon fiber weave which is done over a mold, and then put in an autoclave. Very skilled composite workers are needed to produce flawless parts, be it a fuselage panel or a steering wheel, and not every company has the luxury of quality workers producing the quality parts the 787 demands.

These wrinkles would hardly be a structural weakness, due to the slight flex that any carbon fiber panel would have. The reason the 787 is being made almost entirely from composites is so they can dramatically reduce fuel consumption, and these wrinkles would negate millions of dollars of research by increasing drag, if they were to be present along the whole fuselage. They most certainly would not cause a "drop-out-of-the-frickin'-sky" failure. Don't scare people like that just because you read it in a newspaper!

My view on the 787 is that it is a wonder of engineering, that is desperately needed to help with global warming, and our dependency on foreign oil. Who cares if its delayed by years, so is every other plan being developed right now, including the airbus a350.
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strider_mt2k
08/17/09

In reply to The Boeing Dreamliner 787 Could Be the Next Spruce Goose
THIS is the time to work this stuff out.

Delays hurt THEM, but fixing problems that could potentially make you fall down and go dead helps US in the form of us arriving at our destination.
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kuriakos
08/17/09

In reply to The Boeing Dreamliner 787 Could Be the Next Spruce Goose
Shouldn't Boeing get some credit for building the airplane of the future rather than simply trying to supersize existing designs like that Franco-German monstrosity?
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MadMacs
08/16/09

In reply to The Boeing Dreamliner 787 Could Be the Next Spruce Goose
I am one of the individuals that have actually worked on the 787 in South Carolina.

Although I am not an expert in composites I do believe the wrinkles they are talking about are minor. I've seen them and Boeing wants to stress to Alenia how important it is to fix this problem. The skin on this aircraft is super strong. I am serious. It is very thick and very strong where needed and will last a long time. I'd fly in one with the wrinkles any day. The wrinkles affect the appearance more than anything else.

I am serious, the fuselage wrinkles are very minor.

I remember the skin of the B-52 bomber would have huge wrinkles in it all over the place.
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max11221
08/17/09

@MadMacs: Stop with the facts. We must all resort to little girl hysterics like the author..you know like..... "Dangerous, drop-out-of-the-frickin'-sky wrinkles in the fuselage that negatively affect the plane in ways I don't want to think about given I'm already antsy about air travel."

By the way Jack where is your engineering degree from exactly?

Seriously get a grip....take a train...well unless you read an article about the cracks in the high speed rail line tracks...then we can listen to you over react to that I guess?
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SkyBeing
08/17/09

@MadMacs: Yeah, but even so, it's just as they say. After taking structural engineering courses in my aeronautical engineering degree, it's obvious that such wrinkles would in fact compromise the stability, and especially it's lifetime. It's mainly because since there is the abrupt change in the fuselage that makes the stress collect in those areas over time. Within the immediate future such things aren't problems, but over time, the stress that collects there only grows, until finally, you've got yourself an incident where a 787 tears itself apart due to high concentrations of stress.

This is further true because the aircraft companies are really having a hard time in the current economy with a president who doesn't support the industry much (no offense to him), and a move like this only loses them further money, so they would only make such a risky choice if they knew there were worse consequences if they didn't delay. Such things are also determined through rigorous stress tests, involving everything to high pressures to tension, compression, and cyclic (or lifetime) loading. When is the last time anyone saw a pressurized N2 tank that had wrinkles in it? There's a reason you don't.

But worse, these are pressurized cylinders with folks inside, and every engineer is taught that the human factor is the most important. If a failure in design costs human lives, then the designer is not a good engineer, and *every* expense is afforded to make sure safety is maintained.
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strider_mt2k
08/17/09

@max11221: Technical understanding (or the lack therof) hasn't stopped him in the past.

Makes for a great headline though (click click click)
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aerospaceman
08/16/09

In reply to The Boeing Dreamliner 787 Could Be the Next Spruce Goose
I can't see any parallel that you can draw to the spruce goose. First of all, that aircraft actually flew in prototype form and the reason it was never mass produced, after its admittedly long gestation process, was mainly because it was not needed anymore,with WW2 done and airports built everywhere.

The 787 takes long to complete, but it will always be needed unless some new technology appears that makes all current airliners obsolete.

Second, I don't recall any mentions of structural failures during testing of the Spruce Goose, at least not for these issues to be of the reasons for the project taking so long.

And thirdly, the HH4 Hercules was an aircraft far more complex and more revolutionary, for its time, than the 787 is in our time. Yes, it was also a composite aircraft (wood can be considered a composite), but it was also the 40s equivalent of the Antonov 226...which the 787 is definitely not!
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philibuster
08/17/09

@aerospaceman: Howard Hughes, is that you?
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frigg
08/17/09

@aerospaceman: The level of structural testing is far more sophisticated and rigorous today than it was when they built the Spruce Goose. The Spruce Goose would never pass the tests they're currently running the 787 through.
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aerospaceman
08/17/09

@frigg: I'm not so sure about that, most planes were overbuilt back then, see the DC3 of which many are still flying.
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Brett Tabor
08/16/09

In reply to The Boeing Dreamliner 787 Could Be the Next Spruce Goose
none of the airlines that ordered the plane can afford to pay for it this year anyway. all is fine...
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ITIL_Prince
08/16/09

@Brett Tabor: According to them, the funding is already guaranteed. And with a brand new plane as collateral, the banks will probably go through with the loans. United had trouble with their loans because they used spare parts as collateral, not planes. Not to mention many planes are 20+ years old. These deals will go through.
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Serolf Divad
08/16/09

In reply to The Boeing Dreamliner 787 Could Be the Next Spruce Goose
"affect"

But seriously... shit... can't we do anything right in this country any more? We're fucking uo so badly you wonder how we ever got to where we are in the first place.
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KungFoolery
08/16/09

@Serolf Divad: Actually, a lot of the problems with the 787 come from the fact that Boeing tried to subcontract quite a bit of the assembly of the aircraft. A lot of the foreign subcontractors had trouble completing their sections on time, which led to quite a few delays, though these recent structural failures seem to be due to the difficulty of working with composites (carbon fiber) on an aircraft like the 787. No one has tried making a large passenger jet out of composites before and it looks like the engineers at Boeing may have bitten off more than they can chew, as the materials just don't behave like anything they're used to.
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philibuster
08/17/09

@KungFoolery: Unforseen wrinkles in the skin is not a misunderstanding of the material. Poor production quality may be an engineering problem, but it does not reflect on Boeing, as it is the subcontractor's manufacturing process. These are teething problems related to the largest composite structures ever mass produced.
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strider_mt2k
08/17/09

@Serolf Divad: yes.

Finding problems and fixing them prior to a product being produced is not doing things right. -hello?

Your observations are incorrect and your assumptions are as well.
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