Boeing 787 Dreamliner - Mark Wagner [82]
The combined test team in the AIL reached the “full functionality” point at the end of May 2007, although integration issues continued to dog progress. This was largely down to the sheer size of the work package confronting the team. Excluding software for the in-flight entertainment systems, as well that used in the COTS processors, the 787’s systems required 6.5 million lines of code, or more than three times that used in the 777.
BRINGING IT TOGETHER
By mid-2005 steady progress was being made toward finalizing the detailed design, though the rate of release of digital-design datasets for the production of hardware varied enormously, depending on the part. Nacelle and pylon parts for the engine, for example, were well on the way to detailed release, with the first Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 due to start tests in mid-February 2006. “On the other hand, the wing-to-body fairing will be one of the last items to be closed out. We have agreed where it will contact the fuselage, and we’re finalizing the shape of the fairing in the next month or two,” Gillette said in May that year.
By now the design team had racked up more than eight-hundred-thousand hours of computing time on Cray supercomputers, which are used in conjunction with traditional wind-tunnel work and the digital design tools. “We still do a great deal of wind-tunnel tests, and we’re about eighty percent done with those,” said Gillette. About fifteen-thousand hours of wind-tunnel tests were planned, with the remaining fifth focused on laying out the final lines.
Data from this latter work, mostly focused on the 787-8 variant, was used to develop initial flight-control system software for the first flight simulators. The final round of wind-tunnel work was wrapped up by early 2006, though more follow-on work was planned for subsequent stretch and midrange variants. “We will go back and do specific tune-up testing for the 787-3 and 787-9. It’s a pretty action-packed schedule, and it’s more like a continuous development,” said Gillette.
Firm configuration was completed in September 2005, kicking off the production of structures, systems, and parts all over the world. By mid-2006 factories and even some parts were sufficiently far enough along for first viewing. Eager to demonstrate the incredible rate of progress, Boeing took a group of globe-trotting journalists on a whirlwind tour to visit gleaming new production sites on three continents.
While stops in the United States and Europe revealed impressive but otherwise empty facilities, it was at Fuji in Japan that the very first structural parts of the first 787 were on show. Nestled in a holding fixture on the floor at the back of the Fuji 787 assembly site, and completed just three days before the arrival of the visitors, was the first production composite lower wing center-box skin section.
The group gathered closely around while some, including 787 Airplane Development and Production Vice President Scott Strode, appeared visibly moved by their first encounter with a tangible artifact of the Dreamliner. “Seeing the first real piece of the structure is terrific,” said Strode. “Watching the team see the results of their design work materialize is more of a symbolic milestone, but it’s also a big part of this job. It’s not just the tip of an iceberg, it’s more than that. In terms of industrialization, we’ve got a massive team building up with things going on in countries as far afield as Japan, Korea, Mexico, Russia, Turkey, and all across the USA. Sometimes it is staggering to think how many people are contributing at this time. We’re talking well in excess of ten thousand people.”
By July the skins for the first wing center box, or Section 11, were joined together, and the completed unit was shipped