Boeing 787 Dreamliner - Mark Wagner [41]
Toray had established a prepreg production facility in Tacoma, south of Seattle, in 1992 to support the large amount of composites needed for the 777, and immediately began to gear up to produce much more material to support all the global 7E7 partners. In all, it predicted a need for up to 35 tonnes of composite per aircraft, and began planning to set up new production sites around the world. Although Boeing’s buildup largely required a massive expansion in its prepreg production, the overall increase in composite use in aerospace and other fields prompted Toray to commit to boosting fiber production capacity to 30.65 million pounds by August 2007, up from 19.4 million pounds at the end of 2005.
In February 2007, as demand for the 787 continued unabated, Toray knew this would not be enough and announced plans to spend ¥55 billion ($450 million) over the next two years to expand the fiber production capacity at plants in Japan, the United States, and France. This effectively increased its production commitment to 39.46 million pounds per year, while prepreg production was to more than double, from approximately 125 million square feet per year to almost 363 million square feet per year.
New production lines were planned at its U.S. subsidiary Toray Carbon Fibers America, in Decatur, Alabama, and at its European subsidiary Société des Fibres de Carbone, in Abidos, France. New lines also were planned at its Ehime plant in Japan, while an additional prepreg production line with an annual capacity of 62.43 million square feet was announced for its Tacoma site. A new line with similar capacity also was planned at its Ishikawa, Japan, plant to support the 787 suppliers in Japan.
While structurally pushing the envelope with composites, the 7E7 system’s heritage owed much to the 7J7. Although dating to the 1980s, 7J7 technology included integrated electrical power generation and distribution, fiber-optic data links, fly-by-wire flight controls, an integrated flight management system, flat-panel cockpit displays, and the use of Ada standardized “high order” software. Named for Ada Lovelace, the daughter of the poet Lord Byron, credited with being the world’s first programmer by assisting British inventor Charles Babbage in the 1820s with his early “analytical machine,” Ada software was used in the 777 flight control system.
As Toray was being announced, other composite and metals suppliers were being selected. These included other well-known names in the aerospace composites world, such as Cytec and Hexcel, as well as Alcoa and Russian titanium supplier VSMPO-AVISMA. Cytec was to supply a prepreg combining carbon fiber and a high-temperature bismaleimide (BMI) resin that could withstand the heat generated by the electrothermal wing anti-icing system. The material was to be laid on large preformed honeycomb sub-assemblies provided by Hexcel, and formed into movable leading-edge slats by Spirit AeroSystems at its Tulsa, Oklahoma, site. In the same midwestern city, Hexcel was to work with interiors specialist Nordam on codevelopment of the first composite window frame for any civil airliner using a new material dubbed HexMC. Hexcel also was to provide a myriad of smaller parts such as clips and brackets that, in former Boeing aircraft, were made from metal. It also supplied Goodrich, the selected engine nacelle maker, with HexPly 8552/AS4 prepregs and a new noise-reducing material called Acousti-Cap.
Cytec and Hexcel’s involvement in the 787 extended into other areas as well. Cytec, for example, provided a BMI-based composite mandrel for Spirit’s Section 41 barrel tooling, while Hexcel’s HexTool, a combination of carbon fiber and BMI resin, also was selected for several fabrication tools. Cytec’s toughened composite material, applied using the company’s resin-infusion system, became a key element in a vacuum-assisted resin transfer molding (VARTM) process used by EADS to make the aft-pressure bulkhead. The first all-composite component of