Keywords
Citation
(2001), "Composite wing structures", Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology, Vol. 73 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/aeat.2001.12773aab.009
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2001, MCB UP Limited
Composite wing structures
Composite wing structures
Keywords: Boeing, Wings, Composite components
The primary wing structure for Boeing's Joint Strike Fighter X-32A has been delivered to the company's Palmdale, California plant and wing assembly is under way. Boeing is delivering the highly specialised composite wing skins for the JSF X-23 concept demonstrators, denoted X-32A and X-32B, as part of its bid for a stake in what will amount to a 30-year $300 billion procurement programme, the most ambitious ever for the USA's Department of Defense.
The JSF programme is currently in a four-year demonstration stage, overseen by the US Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps. The UK's Royal Navy and Air Force also plan to use the twenty-first century fighter. The idea behind the shared programme is sharing expenses and sharing new technology among the separate armed forces, which at one time each procured its own planes and then maintained and repaired them at great complexity and expense.
Boeing's purchase of Rockwell International's defense and aerospace operations in 1996 and its August 1997 merger with McDonnell Douglas Corp. significantly broadened Boeing's role in this programme as well as in the International Space Station programme.
Although Boeing is keeping the make-up of the composite a secret for competitive reasons, the company said it is public knowledge that it is a "composite tape lay-up" made at Seattle headquarters. Boeing customised automated contour-tape lay-up machinery that it used on the F-22 fighterwings for the JSF task.
The upper wing skin for the X-32A has been delivered, while the lower wing skin for the X-32A was also delivered. Now, both the upper and lower wing skins for the X-32B are in progress.
The skin measures nearly 29 feet across and weighs 742lb. It is part of a single-unit composite wing module that sits atop the JSF fuselage. Boeing said that a single unit simplifies assembly, reduces cost, and reduces weight by eliminating heavy side of body wing attachments.
Boeing is also working with a different composite material and assembly process that engineers developed at Boeing's.