Traveling Light: GE Composites Give Brand New Airbus Jet a Lift

Traveling Light: GE Composites Give Brand New Airbus Jet a Lift

GE has started building an advanced composites plant that will supply lightweight wing components for one of the world’s most innovative passenger planes, the Airbus A350. The jet had its maiden flight on June 14, on the eve of the Paris Airshow.
GE Aviation traditionally makes high-end composites for next-generation jet engines like the GEnx and the LEAP. But the A350 will be the first passenger jet using advanced GE composites inside its structure.
GE is building the new $50 million, 100,000 square-foot composites plant in Hamble, U.K., near Southampton. Workers at the plant will use an advanced manufacturing method that combines vacuum and heat to harden the composite wing components. Engineers call this method “out-of-autoclave” because it skips a step that involves a kind of giant pressure cooker ovens called autoclaves to manufacture the parts....

The Right Stuff: New GE Advanced Manufacturing Plant to Make Next-Gen Ceramic Parts for Jet Engines

The Right Stuff: New GE Advanced Manufacturing Plant to Make Next-Gen Ceramic Parts for Jet Engines

People have been using ceramics to store food, drink tea, and tile their homes for millennia. But GE engineers recently upped the ante and started putting high-grade ceramics inside jet engines. Their jet-age china is a light super material that combines silicon with ceramic-coated carbon fibers. It is tough enough to take the heat and forces inside a roaring jet engine and outperform even the most advanced steel alloys, a light enough to shave hundreds of pounds off a jet engine. “We are pushing ahead in materials technology, which gives us the ability to make jet engines lighter, run them hotter, and cool them less,” says GE Aviation manufacturing executive Michael Kauffman. “As result, we can make the engines, and the planes they’ll power, more efficient and cheaper to operate.”

CORSE COMPOSITES conçoit pour les gros avionneurs

CORSE COMPOSITES conçoit pour les gros avionneurs

Fleuron de l’industrie de la Corse, le groupe installé à Ajaccio fabrique des trappes de train d’atterrissage de l’A350. Il a reçu le prix régional 2013 de l’innovation industrielle. C'est la raison pour laquelle le fleuron de l'industrie insulaire s'appelle Corse Composites Aéronautiques (CCA). Installée à Ajaccio et forte de trente années d'expérience, l'entreprise s'est frayée une place de choix dans le marché mondial des ...

Les Échos  

Les matériaux composites gagnent du terrain dans les moteurs

Les matériaux composites gagnent du terrain dans les moteurs

Safran a mis au point une technique de tissage 3D de fibres de carbone pour les aubes de son futur moteur Leap. L’équipementier travaille à étendre l’utilisation des composites partout dans les moteurs, notamment avec les composites à matrice céramique (CMC)......

L'usine nouvelle

Next-gen carbon fiber to build faster featherweight jets

Next-gen carbon fiber to build faster featherweight jets 

How do you make super light, super strong carbon fibers even lighter and stronger? To lighten planes’ loads, aerospace engineers have turned to carbon-fiber composites, which match aluminum and titanium in strength, but at a fraction of the weight. These fibers can be 10 times thinner than human hair, and they’ve reduced the weight of Boeing and Airbus aircrafts by 20 percent.