Aircraft manufacturers benefit from modern machining technology.

A few weeks ago, the world's largest aeronautics show, the Paris air show in Le Bourget, came to a close. In the race to book the most orders, Boeing and its European rival Airbus, were almost equal winners.

The fact that the industry’s two top aircraft manufacturers taken together managed to book orders worth over $100 billion during the show demonstrates how big the aerospace market has become.

A significant part of the “aerospace pie” is spent on machined components. The aircraft manufacturer’s requirements are pushing the limits of technology mainly in two areas: on one hand, the weight of many components has to be continually reduced. This means that composite materials are being used for more and more parts. Both the component manufacturing companies and the aircraft manufacturers are currently gaining plenty of new experience with these materials.

On the other hand, the efficiency of the turbines always has to be increased further. This requires extremely hot operating temperatures, attaining the limits even of heat resistant nickel-based alloys. For component manufacturers this means they have to work on materials of the highest quality that are extremely difficult to machine. Or completely new, high quality components get added that have to be machined, such as for example a geared turbofan which has a reduction gearbox between the fan and the low-pressure turbine.

In this issue of MAV we have devoted a large amount of space (pp. 45- 90) to the exciting field of “Manufacturing strategies for the aeronautics industry”, because without innovative tools and modern machines, the dynamic pace of development in aeronautics technology cannot be maintained.

Holger Röhr
Editorial Director
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