Boeing 787 Dreamliner - Mark Wagner [33]
DESIGNED FOR LIFE CYCLE
The approach was called product life-cycle management (PLM), and was based on another software suite from the Dassault Systèmes’ arsenal called ENOVIA. This enabled enterprisewide collaboration, giving every partner access to 3-D digital models of parts, assemblies, and systems. To accompany this, the French company’s DELMIA software suite provided Boeing and its partners with a way to simulate and perfect 787 manufacturing processes before actually building tools and production facilities. With DELMIA for virtual planning and production, CATIA for virtual product design, and ENOVIA for collaboration, the digital assets Boeing would develop would be used across the 787’s entire life cycle, including sales, marketing, and even future derivatives. As the system included planning and layout of production lines using exact 3-D models of parts and assembly tooling, it was expected that the amount of rework, or tasks performed out of sequence, would be dramatically cut. But the dramatic events of 2007 were to prove that no matter how much digital support and planning were available, the unexpected was always lying in wait around the corner to upset Boeing’s plans.
Nose-on, the residual “brow” and four-panel windshield remained the most prominent telltale features of Boeing’s innovative design approach. In April 2005, a year on from program launch, Mike Bair commented, “We’re really pleased with where the aerodynamic design team ended up. They did an outstanding job of turning that artists’ rendition into a real aircraft.” Mark Wagner
But back in 2005 all this lay ahead, and the project was accelerating on track. “Right now we have about three gigabytes of the aircraft defined,” said Cogan, who added that the digital manufacturing environment created a communication “loop back” between 787 design and manufacturing engineers. This was put in to ensure that theoretically, no matter where they were, there was no risk of anybody committing to a design change only to discover it could not be manufactured, or that it needed costly changes to other components. Increased data handling capacity also dramatically speeded up the process of testing, and in most cases rejecting, different design renditions.
Whereas the 777 had pioneered the use of digital design tools, the 787 took this to a new level by using the same digital data set to design not only the baseline aircraft, but also the tools that made the parts and even the production line itself. Here a digitally derived graphic of the 787 final assembly line provides more than just a pretty picture.
This applied to both the structure and the aerodynamics, which were initially honed using CFD analysis. The result was that the design was more fine-tuned by the time large-scale wind tunnel work began. “We tested between fifty and sixty wings on the 767, and on this we will come in at about twelve wings. We aimed for 0.85 Mach and hit it right on the Mach number first time in the transonic wind tunnel tests,” Cogan said.
Systems work was meanwhile starting to ramp up significantly, and the more electric design philosophy was already taking the company in very different directions from anything developed before, recalled 787 systems chief engineer Mike Sinnett. “There has been a shift in the focus for all the teams to think about power, and power stability. We’ve all had to learn to be power engineers in some ways. In the past it was a stovepipe approach, with each looking after their own areas; but this way it is forcing a much broader view of the entire aircraft.”
Systems testing also reflected the federated development concept adopted for the 787 as a whole, with test work at locations around the world rather than just in Seattle. Tests of the aircraft’s powerful electrical generators, for example, were to take place at a laboratory set up by Hamilton Sundstrand at Rockford, Illinois. Additional power systems would be tested at labs elsewhere in the United States.
“With the 777 we did all of that integration at