Brookhouse team delivers the composite package

Citation

(2007), "Brookhouse team delivers the composite package", Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology, Vol. 79 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/aeat.2007.12779bab.002

Brookhouse team delivers the composite package

Brookhouse team delivers the composite package

An expert, international team, assembled and project managed by Brookhouse, of Darwen, has designed, prototyped, and successfully tested a composite fuel tank access cover (FTAC) for the new Airbus A400M military aircraft and is soon to start rate manufacture. The various members of the team have brought to the project, skills in composites components design, materials technology, process tooling and composites manufacture, to ensure that the innovative finished product totally complies with the Airbus specification, especially in terms of its light weight, its damage resistance and cost-effectiveness.

Brookhouse has itself worked closely with Airbus and BAE Systems for many years on projects from the Canberra bomber to the JSF and on various aircraft within the Airbus series. However, in order to win the contract for the design and manufacture of the Fuel Tank Access Cover for the next generation of composite wings for the A400M, the Darwen company brought together a team comprising Sener, a Spanish company, who have an expertise in aeronautical design composites structures, Cytec, a US-based carbon fibre company, and Degussa, who manufacture a leading brand of core material for composite structures. This team then designed, built and tested prototype models prior to the contract award to demonstrate that they had in principle a design that that could fulfil the stringent A400M design requirements. All pre-production tooling required to support this task was manufactured by Brookhouse Tooling.

The qualification programme is now well advanced with the delivery of the production Fuel Tank Accces Covers scheduled to be in the last quarter of this year, in line with the schedule requirements.

The effective handling and efficient completion of this exciting project is a demonstration of Brookhouse's ability to offer a comprehensive, design/make packaged composite product. Acting as overall project manager, Brookhouse can supply aerospace companies with the capability to take responsibility and assume the risk for complete packages of composites development and manufacture work.

Working with global partners, it can develop the materials and techniques to design, manufacture and test prototype composite components and it can then design and manufacture the required production tooling before producing the finished components in-house. As a result, Brookhouse is ideally placed to help aircraft manufacturers meet the challenges and opportunities afforded by composites components and structures.

Brookhouse also reports that it has significantly increased its in-house design capacity with the addition of four more Catia seats at its Darwen manufacturing site. The extra design capability has been created to help the company meet increasing demands from the aerospace sector for composites mould tooling.

In terms of volume, Brookhouse is Europe's leading independent supplier of mould tooling and its totally self- sufficient, multi-disciplined design department offers extensive experience and expertise in the production of 2D and 3D computer-aided designs using advanced software packages. It has particular experience in the application of Catia, the preferred aerospace software, and the new seats comprise two Catia V4.2.4 and two Catia 5.14 seats, increasing the number of in-house Catia seats to twelve. In addition, the company can call on more than 30 Catia contract design engineers, working off site.

The design department uses the latest Sun operating systems with a Fast Transfer Protocol server and high quality translation software packages. It can also send and receive data by CD, tape and e-mail and has the ability to transfer data internally via electronic links to shop-floor machining centres.

The increase in design capacity continues a programme of focused capital investment, covering all aspects of Brookhouse's business from design and production of tooling to manufacture, assembly and finishing of composite components. It also complements the significant investments that the company has made in quality, people and process technology which will help Brookhouse to maintain its dedicated concentration on its core aerospace business to provide its customers with innovative and cost- efficient solutions to composites problems.

Details available from: Brookhouse, Tel.:+44 (0)1254 706000, e-mail: jim.nichols@brookhouse.net