ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA

Industry processes

Aerospace products and the processes by which they are made are complex in nature, and
knowledge of the latter is important to an understanding of the industry. A substantial investment in
research, involving specialized personnel and facilities, is critical to the aerospace industry, as it is to
most industries in which development and productivity play highly important roles. Subsequent
product development and the transition of new technologies through design and testing to
production also involve numerous processes and practices, many dependent on sophisticated
equipment and facilities. The absolute size of the products themselves demands massive structures
to house their assembly and, in the case of space launchers, can require the construction of immense
support equipment.

Investment sources for these processes derive from government financing on a pay-as-needed basis
for military and other national projects or from capital raised by equity financing—either by public or
risk-sharing private investors or by loans from normal venture sources such as banks and insurance
companies. As the cost of large air transports has increased to the hundreds of millions of dollars,
leasing has become an effective conserver of cash flow for airlines, and the leasing companies have
become the source of procurement funds for the contractors. Consistent with the high level of total
funds required and with the risk in cost and market, shared investment among suppliers and prime
contractors over the entire life of a program has become a more frequent practice as well.

Research

The world’s aerospace industry undertakes research and development alone and in conjunction with
governmental agencies and academia. The ultimate aim of the effort is the creation of flight vehicles
more advanced than their predecessors. Because of the complexity—i.e., the “systems” nature—of
the industry’s end products, advancements commonly require improvements across many
technological disciplines.

Aerospace research and development comprises three main activities. Basic research involves
investigations that may have no application in existing systems but provide advancement of
knowledge for its potential. Applied research is the investigative effort aimed at direct applications.
Development, by definition, is the use of scientific knowledge directed toward the production of
useful materials, devices, systems or methods, including design and development of prototypes and
processes; it is the translation into hardware and software of the results of applied research. The
primary focus in the aerospace industry is on applied research and development related to the
introduction and improvement of products.

Since applied research is absolutely vital to the competitiveness of the industry, it is often supported
by governments. In the United States, funds are commonly provided by agencies such as NASA and
the military service laboratories that work directly with the country’s industry. In Europe and the rest
of the world, governments most often provide financial support for research directly to their
countries’ industry. The multinational European Space Agency maintains ESTEC, the European Space
Research and Technology Centre, in Noordwijk, Netherlands. ESTEC is the technical development
interface between European industry and the scientific community. It oversees the development of
spacecraft, and it has its own technological laboratories and extensive facilities for testing spacecraft
and components under simulated launch and in-space conditions. Britain, Sweden, and France also
support notable government laboratories.

Reducing the weight of aircraft structures has always been a focus of research. In addition to ongoing
research into composite materials, investigation of aluminum-lithium and other alloys continues to
foster advances in metals. Materials research for supersonic and hypersonic vehicles focuses on both
high-temperature polymers and lightweight metals as well as high-temperature polymer-matrix
composites, adhesives, sealants, light alloys, and metal-matrix composites for structural applications
(see materials science: Materials for aerospace).

To improve the all-weather operation of commercial aircraft, enhanced vision systems using video
and infrared cameras or millimetre-wave radar are being pursued. Other areas of research include
fly-by-light techniques that transmit commands through fibre-optic cables rather than electrically.
The demand for longer vehicle lifetimes has made vital the development of nondestructive
evaluation techniques to measure quality states and estimate the remaining lifetimes of structures.

In the military sector, research studies focus on means to enhance the maneuverability and
survivability of flight vehicles. Combat survivability is defined as the capability of an aircraft to avoid
or withstand a hostile environment, and related research centres on threat warning, signal jamming,
radar deception, reduction of infrared signatures, threat suppression, redundancy and protection of
components, passive and active damage suppression, and shielding.

Since the first spacecraft were launched, the size and weight of satellites and probes have increased
constantly, as have costs. Much of spacecraft research is focused on reversing this trend by
miniaturizing instruments, propulsion systems, power sources, and other components and
developing small spacecraft that can replace larger systems. Important research directions include
vehicle autonomy, microelectronic and microelectromechanical systems, ion engines, modular
architecture and multifunctional systems, and high-efficiency solar arrays that replace silicon cells
with significantly more effective photovoltaic materials such as gallium arsenide.

Product development and testing

Initiation of the product development process differs between the military and commercial sectors.
In the United States the defense services normally provide detailed mission specifications for desired
products, against which contractors submit proposals as part of a competitive process. Proposals are
reviewed, and one or more development contractors are selected. In some cases contracts are
awarded solely for the development of competitive prototypes. The company or team of companies
that develops the winning design then may receive a full-scale development and production contract.

In the civil aircraft sector, manufacturers conduct detailed market studies to determine the need for
new vehicle designs, then define specifications, announce to potential customers their intention to
develop the new product, and solicit orders. When sufficient firm orders are obtained—from the so-
called launching customers—the program is officially initiated. The customers’ engineers generally
work together with the manufacturers to influence the final design to fit specific needs.

Design methods
The design cycle of a new flight vehicle has changed radically since the 1980s because of new
methods, tools, and guidelines. Traditionally, the cycle begins with a conceptual design of the overall
product followed by the preliminary design, in which most or all subsystems take shape. In most, if
not all, cases, several iterations must be made before a final design is achieved. Since not all
production issues are generally anticipated by design engineers, substantial design rework is
common. Despite the apparent simplicity of the initial conceptual design phase, 70–80 percent of the
aerospace product’s cost is determined in this stage.

Because reducing costs has become increasingly important, a new design method, concurrent
engineering (CE), has been replacing the traditional cycle. CE simultaneously organizes many aspects
of the design effort under the aegis of special teams of designers, engineers, and representatives of
other relevant activities and processes. The method allows supporting activities such as stress
analysis, aerodynamics, and materials analysis, which ordinarily would be done sequentially, to be
carried out together. A step beyond CE, incorporating production, quality assurance, procurement,
and marketing within the teams, is a method called integrated product and process development
(IPPD). IPPD ensures that the needs of the users and those who bring the product to the customer
through manufacturing and outside procurement are considered at the beginning of the design/build
cycle. In cases in which maintenance plays a major role in the life cycle of a product, relevant
personnel from that segment are also brought into the teams.

CE and IPPD have resulted in numerous improvements for the industry. They have shortened the
total time required to bring products to market, simplified product structures by reducing parts
counts, lowered product and life-cycle costs, reduced defect rates, increased reliability, and
shortened development cycles. For example, in the development of the 777, Boeing formed 238
design/build teams, which helped to reduce the number of changes necessary after release of initial
designs to less than half of that for earlier models done conventionally.

Traditionally, the design process of defense aerospace systems has been governed by military
specifications and standards, which specify in detail what to build and how to build it. In June 1994 a
U.S. Department of Defense memorandum substituted performance specifications describing system
requirements for previously used military specifications. The policy was intended to reduce costs,
shorten acquisition cycles, and allow the use of commercial off-the-shelf advanced technologies and
hardware. Contractors were thus given more freedoms but were also required to accept more
accountability for the success or failure of their products. Although European design processes have
not yet incorporated this approach, the introduction of commercial quality standards is being
progressively implemented under international commercial guidelines published by the International
Organization for Standardization (ISO).

Use of computers

The computer has also fundamentally changed the development process by permitting digital
modeling and simulation as well as computer-aided design in conjunction with computer-aided
manufacturing (CAD/CAM; see computer-aided engineering). In the early design stage of a flight
vehicle, digital computer modeling of prospective designs enables rapid examination of several
candidate configurations and thus replaces a portion of costly wind-tunnel testing. Modern systems
create a three-dimensional model—a virtual flight vehicle—based on the data sets entered. All
details, from the airframe to the electric subsystem, are stored in the computer. This eliminates the
requirement for full-size physical models, known as mock-ups, on which the engineers verify design
layouts. Widely used CAD/CAM software packages in the aerospace industry include CATIA from
Dassault Systemes/IBM, Unigraphics from Unigraphics Solutions, and CADDS and Pro/ENGINEER from
Parametric Technology Corporation. Boeing used the CATIA package to develop the 777, the first
aircraft to have been designed completely with computers without a mock-up.

Wind-tunnel testing

Computer simulation has reduced the amount of wind-tunnel testing necessary, but the latter
remains an important part of the development process in the aerospace industry. During
development of the Boeing 777, for example, some 2,000 hours in the wind tunnel were clocked. The
wind tunnel, which predates powered flight by 32 years, is a test apparatus in which air is blown over
a model in a test section, creating an effect comparable to flight. Some low-speed tunnels have test
sections large enough to accommodate a complete small airplane or a wing-nacelle section of a large
aircraft. In high-speed tunnels, for which a large amount of energy must be supplied to provide
supersonic velocities, test models are of reduced scale—for research purposes they are sometimes
only centimetres in span or length. Tunnels are classified according to airflow velocity: subsonic (up
to Mach 0.8), transonic (Mach 0.8–1.2), supersonic (Mach 1.2–6), hypersonic (Mach 6–12), or
hypervelocity (above Mach 12).

Prototype testing and certification

In the prototype construction phase, emphasis shifts to testing. A customary procedure is to build
several test airplanes solely to verify the design. The structural integrity of the aircraft is determined
in static and dynamic tests. Ground testing requires an array of facilities, including ovens for applying
high temperatures to materials, acoustic chambers to permit study of the effect of high-frequency
engine noise on structures, rigs for measuring landing impacts, and variable-frequency vibrators for
investigations of vibration and flutter characteristics of structures. Test fixtures verify that the
ultimate load factor called for in the design has been met or exceeded; for example, the wings may
be loaded until they break. In dynamic or fatigue tests, the life of the aircraft is simulated in time-
lapse fashion. Thus an airplane may go through more than 100,000 equivalent “flight hours” before it
is taken apart and examined completely in every detail.

While prototype airframes are being built, tests are also conducted on ancillary equipment. Because
of the broad variety of this equipment, the testing process differs for each system. Structural and
mechanical systems are tested in similar fashion to that described for aircraft structures, whereas
electrical and electronic equipment is exhaustively checked by a battery of electronic test equipment
that is often tailored to the system being examined. As the equipment is run through its performance
cycle, monitors affirm or detect and isolate faults for correction. In many cases, complete systems
are further checked in altitude chambers that simulate operating environments.

Engines are tested in the propulsion equivalent of the wind tunnel, a test cell capable of simulating
flight conditions. To qualify for installation, a new engine undergoes several hundred hours of testing
that embraces the entire intended range of speed and altitude capacity of the airplane. In endurance
testing, the engine must operate for more than 1,000 hours continuously, many at maximum thrust.
In one unique test, dead birds are thrown into the engine to simulate its in-flight ingestion of living
birds, a hazard that has caused flight failures. Test engines are heavily instrumented, and the
recorded data are transmitted to a computer for processing. After the test runs, the engines are
completely disassembled and inspected.

As a general rule, flight testing of prototype aircraft is conducted over sparsely populated areas or
over water because of the possibility of accident and to allow freedom for maneuvers. Flight testing
is necessary to validate what has only been analysis to this stage, although modern procedures of
computerized design and wind-tunnel testing are so thorough and extensive that the results of the
flight-test phase rarely dictate a major design change. Because simulators allow test pilots to “fly”
the aircraft well before the first prototype has been built, the behaviour of the plane tends to
conform to specifications and expectations.

Regulations for flight certification largely govern tests for commercial aircraft, and certification takes
approximately one year. Military aircraft flight testing, which includes performance with many
different weapons systems, takes nearly twice that time. For certification, all aircraft must
demonstrate capabilities in numerous performance tests under all anticipated conditions—for
example, emergency braking, stall trials, loss of engine thrust, and takeoff and landing in extremely
hot, cold, high-altitude, and low-altitude environments.

Once a civil aircraft has demonstrated its airworthiness in the flight certification program, it can enter
regular service. The necessary certificates are issued in the United States by the Federal Aviation
Administration (FAA) and in Europe by the Joint Airworthiness Authorities (JAA). These certifications
are required for any aircraft purchased within the United States or Europe, respectively, and serve
throughout the world as the basis for certifying civil aircraft that are to enter service in those
countries. Russia and China have certification processes largely modeled on American and European
standards. Significant aircraft suppliers from Brazil, Japan, and Indonesia use American and European
certification standards.

Spacecraft, launch vehicle, and missile development

The research effort that goes into the development of missiles, launch vehicles, and spacecraft
parallels that of the airplane in the design and ground-test stages but differs for the flight-test stage.
For major launch vehicles and strategic missiles, the absence of a pilot on board, the great expense of
a single launch, and the inability to recover and reuse the test vehicle call for rigorous test
techniques, highly elaborate instrumentation both in the vehicle and on the ground, and
extraordinarily intensive preflight checkout in order to prevent a costly abort.

Unmanned spacecraft are unique in that they rarely undergo prototype test flights; rather, they are
carried into orbit with their full complement of operational instrumentation on tested launch
vehicles. Spacecraft instrumentation sends information about performance and operation back to
the Earth, thereby providing the basis for design refinement in later models of the same family. The
substitute for prototype testing is ground-based simulation, conducted in two types of simulators:
the space simulator, which duplicates all the environmental conditions in which the spacecraft will
operate, and the mission simulator, which permits carrying out the entire range of maneuvers and
system operations that might be performed on an actual flight.

Manufacturing

Historical context
Understanding modern aerospace manufacturing processes requires that they be viewed in the
context of the historical development of vehicle design. The spruce and fir frames of aircraft through
World War I required skilled woodworkers and their equipment, coupled with crafters—often
women transferring homemaking skills to the shop—who laced or sewed fabric to the frames. These
“skins” for the wings and fuselages were painted with acetone-based lacquers or dopes to tighten
and toughen surfaces; thus factories had large brush or spray areas with natural or induced air
circulation to enhance drying and dissipation of fumes. At the same time, with the exception of the
air-cooled engine designs developed by the Wright brothers and sold widely in Europe, aircraft
engine manufacturing was an extension of the production of liquid-cooled automobile motors.
Emphasized were refined machining techniques for the cylinder head fins, which provided the
extensive cooling surfaces needed.

The advent of metal airframes changed both the character of manufacturing processes and the skills
required of production workers. At first, only the wood framework of fuselages was replaced by
tubular aluminum trusses connected with mechanical fasteners or welding; coverings were still sewn
and glued fabric. In the mid 1930s, as thin rolled aluminum alloys became available, all-metal
structures for fuselages and then wings became prevalent. Skilled craftsmen were required to
operate the metalworking machines, and new emphasis was placed on flush riveting and welding and
on hard tooling of fixtures to facilitate alignment and assembly. At the same time, the forging of
landing-gear components and major structural fittings and the forming of sheet metal grew to
resemble processes in the automobile industry. This affinity became particularly close as all-metal
bombers and transports revolutionized manufacturing of all but small private planes. It was not
surprising, therefore, that the mass producers of automobiles and related equipment became
manufacturers of military aircraft during World War II.

After the war, jet propulsion and other technical advances led to further changes in manufacturing
techniques and processes. The economics of high-speed transports resulted in increases in passenger
capacity, which necessitated aircraft much larger than wartime bombers. This, in turn, required
expanded facilities and fixtures such that by the start of the 21st century initial plant investment for
modern airliners had reached as high as $2 billion, even with more than 50 percent of the work being
done by suppliers to the prime contractor. Thus, a community of structural subassembly contractors
building wings, sections of fuselages, and horizontal surfaces now relieve some of the space and
tooling needs of prime contractors such as Boeing in the United States and Airbus Industrie in
Europe. Russian companies, however, still operate in a more vertically integrated mode, keeping all
aspects of component manufacture and assembly within one organization.

Modern aircraft manufacture has been described as “a craft process with a mass production
mentality.” With the exception of experimental and very specialized airplanes, this has generally
been true. Large aircraft consist of the assembly of one million to five million separate parts, and
complex spacecraft of several hundred thousand parts. Each different type demands unique skills
and manufacturing methods.

Because of the extensive range of skills and facilities required, no single company builds an entire
flight vehicle. Manufacturing in the aerospace industry crosses nearly all construction boundaries—
for example, conventional machine shops for mechanical components, clean rooms for electronic
parts, and unusually large final-assembly facilities for multi-hundred-ton aircraft, space vehicles, and
missiles. In every developed country of the world, major aerospace production programs incorporate
a complete range of hardware and software from suppliers that operate as subcontractors to the
prime contractor or systems integrator. Subcontracting covers not only the onboard equipment but
also, in most large projects, major elements of the airframe itself. In Europe, where large
developments occur in multinational cooperative efforts, the distribution of the production is
especially broad.

Fabrication processes and materials

Fabrication involves the manufacture of individual components that make up larger assemblies or
end products. This activity encompasses the working of metals and the incorporation of electrical
and electronic devices into processors, circuit boards, and subassemblies for the components of
navigation, communication, and control systems. Most of the basic metal-fabrication methods have
been employed since World War II. Modern differences, such as tighter metal-cutting tolerances, are
related to advances in the capabilities of machines and tools (see metallurgy: Metalworking). In
electronic fabrication, changes have mirrored those of the semiconductor and computer industries.
In past decades, electronic elements having single functions were linked with wiring to make up the
multiple functions necessary for systems. In modern systems, hundreds of functions are performed
by a single microchip or, in conjunction with microminiaturized elements, by printed circuit boards
(see integrated circuit).

Working of materials

Metals are cut, shaped, bored, bent, and formed by tools and machines operated manually or,
increasingly, under the control of computers programmed to guide the necessary operations
consistently and with greater precision than can normally be provided by humans. The parallels for
electrical and electronic fabrication are robotic tools for insertion of components into circuit boards,
wave soldering (an automated process for securing components to circuit boards with a standing
wave of molten solder) for rapid, uniform connections, and photolithography (photographic transfer
of a pattern to a surface for etching) for making circuit boards and multichip modules.

Materials play an important role not only in the fabrication methods used but also in the safety
measures employed. For example, beryllium, whose combination of light weight, high strength, and
high melting point makes it a valuable structural material, yields dust and chips during machining.
Because exposure to beryllium particles can cause adverse health effects, special care is required to
preclude their contamination of personnel or atmosphere. Polymer-matrix composites also require
special contamination protection because of the toxic character of the resins involved.

In the production of components that must bear high loads yet be as light as possible, aerospace
fabricators have evolved engineering techniques for modifying the characteristics of a material. The
most notable example is the so-called honeycomb sandwich, which is far lighter than a metal plate of
comparable thickness and has greater resistance to bending. The sandwich consists of a honeycomb
core, composed of rows of hollow hexagonal cells, bonded between extremely thin metal face
sheets. Aluminum is the most extensively used metal in both core and face sheets, but the technique
is applicable to a large variety of metallic and nonmetallic materials. Sandwich construction is now
employed to some degree in almost every type of flight vehicle.
Polymer-matrix composites are valued in the aerospace industry for their stiffness, lightness, and
heat resistance (see materials science: Polymer-matrix composites). They are fabricated materials in
which carbon or hydrocarbon fibres (and sometimes metallic strands, filaments, or particles) are
bonded together by polymer resins in either sheet or fibre-wound form. In the former, individual
sheet elements are layered in metal, wood, or plastic molds and joined with adhesives. Applications
for sheet composites include wing skins and fuselage bulkheads in aircraft and the underlying
support for solar arrays in satellites. In fibre-wound forms, tubular or spherical shapes are fabricated
by winding continuous fibre on a spinning mold (mandrel) with high-speed, computer-programmed
precision, injecting liquid resin as the part is formed, and then curing the resin. This process is used
for forming rocket motor casings; spherical containers for fuels, lubricants, and gases; and ducts for
aircraft environmental systems.

Special requirements of military aircraft

Military aircraft demand lightweight structures to achieve high performance. Moreover, the
materials used must be able to withstand the temperatures created by air friction when the vehicle is
flying at high speeds. These requirements have fostered the use of new metals such as aluminum-
magnesium alloys and titanium, as well as composites and polymers for many surfaces—as much as
35 percent of the structure (see materials science: Materials for aerospace). The manufacture of
these materials and their products has created new challenges. Titanium, although a relatively brittle
material, has high strength-to-weight properties at operating temperatures as high as 480 °C (900
°F). Forming it into sheets generally requires heated dies and specialized machining and grinding.
Titanium is therefore usually limited to applications, such as leading edges for wings and tails and
related fittings, where its characteristics excel. Composites, on the other hand, are increasingly
becoming staples of aircraft outer surfaces; thus, most structure manufacturers incorporate the
necessary fabrication technology in their factories. To achieve required strengths, composite
materials must be bonded in either hot- or cold-cure processes. Bonding is achieved within a
vacuum, supplied either within evacuated rubberized bags or in autoclaves (temperature- and
pressure-controlled chambers). Complementing the fabrication of composite sheets and fibre-wound
forms is a comparatively recent method called pultrusion, which extrudes composite shapes in much
the same fashion as molten metals are forced through a die. Other composite-making techniques
incorporate the kind of ultralight structural practices used with metals and fibreglass, such as
sandwich construction.

Engine and avionics manufacture

Although the airframe manufacturers remain the major integrators and sellers of aircraft, costs of
production have shifted increasingly toward the key subsystems of propulsion and avionics and
auxiliary equipment such as landing gear and, in the case of military airplanes, armament. Typically,
for civil transports the costs average 50 percent for structure and integration, 20 percent for engines,
and 30 percent for avionics. For military aircraft, the cost of avionics, including systems associated
with self-protection and weapons management, can reach 50 percent, with 20 percent for engines
and 30 percent for airframe and integration. In fact, the classic final assembly and test phases
represent a mere 7–10 percent of the cost of modern fighter aircraft.

With the exception of lightweight piston engines for private craft, jet engines account for the largest
production lines. The manufacture of jet engines, including turboprops and turboshafts, requires
critical attention to close tolerances, which in turn demands precision forgings, castings, and
machinery from the suppliers of the engine makers. Quality issues clearly drive this production and
have stimulated inspection and alignment methods employing laser instrumentation and computer
techniques that enhance the application of quality-control methods such as statistical process
control.

Avionics production involves not only the precision manufacture of computer processors but also
extra safety and reliability issues. This has resulted in extended test requirements and tightened
limits on performance parameters and has stimulated the development of new processes for circuit-
board assembly.

An increasingly important element of avionics production is the operating software. This is evidenced
by the rise in software cost for U.S. defense programs from $5 billion to $35 billion between 1985
and 1995. Modern production methods for software employ “factory” techniques that translate
requirements directly to code through an automated process. These have reduced the rate of
software defects and substantially cut development time. Such gains are particularly significant in the
context of the several million lines of code required by modern fighters and commercial transports,
compared with the 20,000 lines associated with military aircraft of the 1960s.

Satellite, launch vehicle, and missile manufacture

The manufacturing processes for aircraft are largely paralleled in the production of satellites, their
launch vehicles, and missiles. Because minimum weight is critical for all three kinds of products, the
use of composites has grown such that it can include the entire structure for satellites and smaller
missiles. For these vehicles, electronics production plays an increased role in manufacture,
accounting for as much as 70 percent of the total cost. Nevertheless, the small quantity of satellites
necessary, even for large constellations in communications systems, limits some of the benefits of
volume production, such as reduced costs, although this is not necessarily true of component
products that are common to several satellite designs—for example, sensors, instruments, small
rocket motors, and communications equipment.

Assembly methods and facilities

Building of subassemblies

Assembly of aerospace vehicles at the prime contractor or systems integrator begins with the
accumulation of subassemblies. An example of a typical subassembly for a transport aircraft is the
rear fuselage section, which is itself composed of several segments. (These segments are often built
by subcontractors, who in turn deal with their own suppliers of the segments’ constituent elements.)
The segments are taken to the subassembly area, where teams of workers fit them into support jigs
or fixtures and join them into a unit, within which the interior equipment is then installed. In similar
manner, teams put together other subassemblies such as the remaining fuselage sections, wing
sections, tail sections, and engine nacelles. The various subassemblies then are taken to the main
assembly line, where final integration takes place.

Similarly, spacecraft comprise subassemblies (typically the structural, propulsion, guidance and
control, communication, and payload modules, plus solar arrays when required), each of which is
made up of many components. These modules may be built within the plant of the spacecraft
integrator or by subcontractors, with final assembly and testing being the usual responsibilities and
concentration of the former.

In both aircraft and spacecraft, integration of a subassembly’s components is most often effected in
black boxes. In addition to enclosing electronic and electrical subelements, these housings have
connectors that interface with various systems in the vehicles.

The performance of subassemblies as units is verified prior to their integration into final assemblies.
In the case of structural subassemblies, verification usually is confined to load testing, alignment and
assurance of dimensions and tolerances, and electrical conformity checks for installed cabling. For
subassemblies with electrical and electronic, hydraulic, and mechanically actuated components,
extensive tests are usually performed in simulated flight environments incorporating vacuum,
temperature, and vibration excursions. The required time, test equipment, and related computer
software represent a significant portion of the cost of these elements, some 10–25 percent.

Final assembly

The final assembly of complete aircraft usually requires a facility furnished with a network of
overhead rails on which ride heavy-lift cranes capable of moving large portions of vehicles. Facility
size is governed by vehicle dimensions; for example, Boeing’s plant in Everett, Washington, is the
world’s largest building by volume, containing some 13.4 million cubic metres (473 million cubic feet)
and covering an area of 405,000 square metres (4.4 million square feet). Airbus Industrie’s Final
Assembly Complex Clément Ader, near Toulouse, France, although smaller, with 5.3 million cubic
metres (187 million cubic feet), is Europe’s largest industrial building.

Aircraft assembly normally starts with the joining, or mating, of fuselage subassemblies that have
been craned into a supporting jig or fixture. As the vehicle is assembled, it is moved through a
succession of work stations, acquiring additional subassemblies and accumulating its onboard
systems, ducts, control cables, and other interior plumbing. Light- and medium-weight aircraft may
be moved on wheeled fixtures; heavier aircraft are craned. Modern large planes and spacecraft often
are moved via an adaptation of the air-cushion technique. Highly compressed air is pumped into the
assembly fixture supports and escapes downward through holes. The powerful thrust of the escaping
air lifts the entire fixture and vehicle assembly several millimetres off the floor, enough to permit
movement by tractor or human power. Major assembly steps include the additions of nose and tail
sections, wings, engines, and landing gear. On completion of work at the last station, the airplane is
rolled out of the assembly plant to the flight line for its production flight test, a process that involves
a thorough checkout of specified performance.

Many types of small missiles require no such elaborate techniques or facilities. Composed basically of
a cylindrical shell, a warhead, a guidance system, and a rocket motor, they are readily assembled in a
low-bay plant. Larger missiles of the ballistic type and space launch vehicles are assembled in high-
bay facilities with their longitudinal axes vertical. In the case of the space shuttle, for example, the
mating of the orbiter with the external tank and solid rocket boosters is conducted with tail down in
the 160-metre- (525-foot-) high Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Interior of the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, U.S. Suspended
within is the space shuttle Atlantis before it is joined with its external tank and solid-fuel rocket
boosters for flight. One of the largest buildings in the world, the VAB was built to accommodate the
assembly of the Apollo-Saturn V vehicles. It contains nearly 3.7 million cubic metres (about 130
million cubic feet) of space.© Roger Ressmeyer/Corbis

Spacecraft are unique among flight vehicles in that their final assembly generally takes place under
clean-room conditions. A typical clean room has an atmosphere-control system that rigidly regulates
temperature and humidity and bars entrance, by means of filters, of all but minuscule
contamination. Walls and ceilings are typically of one-piece plastic, lacking cracks where dust might
collect, and are washed and vacuumed daily. Maintenance of spacecraft or faulty equipment cannot
be done within the room without a subsequent thorough environmental “scrubbing.”

Some spacecraft are assembled at successive work stations; others remain in a fixed position while
teams of specialists successively install the myriad onboard systems. Because spacecraft have no
opportunity for flight testing, an intensely detailed acceptance checkout is handled in the clean room
by automatic test equipment. The spacecraft is then encased in a sterile container for shipment.

Verification

Critical for all aerospace vehicles, once they are assembled, are the methods for ensuring the quality
of the manufacturing and assembly processes. In the case of aircraft this involves extensive
inspections of structural and mechanical items, including functional verification of equipment such as
control surfaces and systems, landing-gear operation, avionics performance, weapons-systems
interfaces, and personnel (crew and passenger) environmental conditioning. Helicopters, as a special
class of aircraft, receive inspections that incorporate verification of rotor drive systems and
associated gear trains.

For spacecraft, even greater emphasis is placed on functional verification including, in most cases,
assurance of the performance of all critical operations in thermal vacuum chambers that simulate
space. In addition, since most of its operations are not modifiable to a significant extent once a
spacecraft is in orbit, those that are automatically programmed or controlled by computers require
highly detailed validation. This is preferably carried out with accurate simulations, if not actual use, of
the communication and command links that will be used during the space mission.

Launch vehicles are verified in somewhat similar fashion. They are tested fully assembled, most often
at the launch pad or in a proximate assembly facility where the final elements, including upper-stage
rockets and payloads, are installed. The size of most launch vehicles precludes environmental testing
at the fully assembled level; rather they are given such testing at the highest possible levels of
subassembly. Missiles often follow the spacecraft mode, with emphasis on alignments and testing of
sensors and target seekers or other guidance systems being paramount, since they are often
adjusted just prior to flight.

Lean manufacturing

Consistent with improving the economics of aerospace vehicles is the transition to a new paradigm
for the entire industry, from concept development to operations. This approach involves all
processes pertaining to the acquisition, design, development, and manufacturing of a product or
system and has been variously called “lean,” “agile,” or “synchronous” manufacturing. It strives to
eliminate non-value-added or wasteful resources, including material, space, tooling, and labour. It
applies such principles as waste minimization, flexibility, and responsiveness to change; these are
supported by efforts to optimize the flow of material and information and to achieve superior quality
in order to eliminate scrap and rework.

Lean manufacturing was derived from studies of the automobile industry, which showed that the
best Japanese carmakers had achieved competitive advantages by using practices rooted in the
principles noted. For the aerospace industry, its implementation involves major cultural changes
emphasizing integrated teams of workers having decision-making responsibility at levels closest to
where work is performed, in contrast to the conventional system in which responsibility is
transferred upward through multiple layers of management. It is estimated that full implementation
of this paradigm can reduce costs and product cycle times by 50 percent.

In 1992 the U.S. Air Force funded a study to evaluate the applicability of lean manufacturing to
aerospace products. From that effort was established the Lean Aerospace Initiative, a consortium of
20 companies and several government agencies. With federal funding, the participating firms
undertook pilot programs, some of which led to the incorporation of commercial lean manufacturing
practices in the manufacture of defense products. Although these changes have produced major
benefits in local stages of production, their translation to entire product enterprises has been slow.
Part of the reason is that a complete enterprise comprises not only design and production but also
the overhead functions of administration and support as well as customers and suppliers.
Nevertheless, progress was being made with the expansion of lean initiative programs to these
elements.

Maintenance

The maintenance support provided by aerospace-industry firms is applied primarily to corporate,

commercial, and military aircraft. Light-plane maintenance is generally handled by local fixed-base
operators, which are not considered part of the aerospace industrial complex. Launch vehicles and
unmanned spacecraft, although maintained throughout their prelaunch life by constant checking and
correction, are single-use systems. For manned spacecraft the paramount concern is crew safety. The
space shuttle, for example, is thoroughly overhauled by NASA and contractor personnel after every
flight. Small military missiles are maintained in the field by specialists in their operating units. Ballistic
missiles similarly undergo routine maintenance at their field installations, but certain types of work,
for example, realignment of structure and sensors, require return of the missile to the originating
plant.

Routine maintenance of aircraft is normally carried out by the civil or military operator. It includes
frequent inspections, either after every flight or a designated series of flights or after a time interval,
and minor maintenance such as replacement of a part or repair of a faulty item of equipment. This
type of maintenance can be handled at most airline terminals and military bases. Major maintenance
work involves complete rework of an airplane or engine that has had considerable service time.
Larger airlines have their own extensive technical facilities for major overhaul, and major military air
forces are similarly equipped. Usually these facilities specialize in servicing specific models to achieve
a high degree of proficiency and efficiency. Despite their competition in the air, smaller airlines often
cooperate on the ground and contract for the technical services of other carriers to do their
maintenance work. Some manufacturers offer maintenance service through subsidiaries that
specialize in this business. The costs involved in the maintenance of aerospace systems are
substantial. For example, over the lifetime of a normal jet engine, an operator will spend about two
to three times its original acquisition cost on maintenance.

Boeing 747: maintenanceOverview of a Boeing 747 undergoing a comprehensive inspection known

as the D-Check.Contunico © ZDF Enterprises GmbH, Mainz
The role of the actual manufacturer in the maintenance of its products is principally that of a supplier
of parts, documentation, and advice. Provision of spare parts is a particularly important source of
revenue for the original equipment manufacturers. Boeing, for example, sends out some 650,000
spare parts per year to about 400 airlines. The firm’s key spare-parts centre holds 410,000 different
parts—50,000,000 items altogether—and operates 24 hours a day. The supplying of documentation
in electronic form is now a routine feature. Documentation for the Airbus A320 jetliner, which
originally involved 60,000 text pages, 16,000 figures, and legions of microfilms and which weighed
100 kg (220 pounds), has been replaced by several CD-ROMs, which include the maintenance
manual, an illustrated spare-parts catalog, a troubleshooting manual, and a product management
database.

Inspection technologies

The most critical portion of maintenance work is inspection to detect cracks, flaws, debonds,
delamination, corrosion, and other detrimental changes before they threaten the aircraft. Inspectors
do much of their work visually, often using nothing more sophisticated than a flashlight and a mirror.
For most of the remainder, they use ultrasound, X-rays, eddy currents, and other nondestructive
evaluation (NDE) methods (see materials testing: Nondestructive testing). Current research efforts in
NDE techniques seek ultimately to probe entire aircraft with no disassembly. A number of newer NDE
technologies including holography, pulsed thermometry, shearography, and neutron radiation are
used routinely by manufacturers, especially for such critical elements as turbine components and
composites, but they have as yet only limited applications in maintenance.

Airframe and engine overhaul

To ensure the safe operation of airliners, airframes and engines of civil and military aircraft have
obligatory major overhauls after specified time intervals. For the airframes of commercial airliners,
this is required after about five years (22,000 flight hours) of operation. In such a major overhaul, the
first phase is an evaluation of the technical “health” of the aircraft and its engines. To do this, the
entire structure is disassembled, and each component is visually inspected for wear and damage.
Additionally, structures are examined by X-ray, fluorescent, ultrasonic, and dye-penetrant methods
to detect defects not visible to the eye. Corrosion is removed by sandblasting or vacuum blasting.
Defective components are repaired or replaced, sometimes requiring machining operations to make
a part not carried as a spare. With delamination being the most frequent problem faced during
maintenance of composites, specialized shops have been established as part of maintenance facilities
to make required repairs.

The second phase of overhaul consists of modifications to an aircraft, either because they are
recommended by the manufacturer (through service bulletins) on the basis of service experience or
because performance can be improved. An example of the latter is the strengthening of structural
components to increase the maximum takeoff weight.

Engines, on a more frequent cycle, are completely disassembled, and individual parts are inspected
and cleaned. Precision measurement equipment verifies conformance to the tight tolerance limits
set by the manufacturers, and those components that are even marginally off are repaired or
replaced. Engines are then reassembled, mounted in a test cell, and run through a lengthy series of
tests. In all maintenance and overhaul operations, whether airframe, engine, or accessories,
technicians are required to follow the same quality-control procedures that were in effect during
original manufacture.

Remanufacture and upgrading

The most elaborate type of program under the general heading of maintenance is the
remanufacturing process. Performed at aircraft-manufacturing facilities, remanufacture is a measure
that combines a general overhaul with an upgrade of some of the aircraft’s systems. The latter
process often paces the progressive development of a basic airplane type through several models,
and it incorporates design changes and improved onboard systems dictated by service experience
with the original model. Thus, if a particular model in service still has years of useful life, it is more
economical to upgrade its systems by remanufacture than to build an entirely new aircraft.

A second reason for upgrades is the increasing in-service time being demanded from all aircraft.
Factors such as the escalating prices of new military fighters and declining defense budgets have
forced most countries to modernize their existing aircraft in order to prolong their useful life until
newer craft can be afforded. The jet-fighter upgrade market has become increasingly significant,
spawning an industry ranging from independent small firms to large national aircraft conglomerates,
including the original manufacturers, which often team with the industry of the potential customer
country to make a sales offer more attractive. The leading company in the fighter upgrade market is
Israel Aircraft Industries, which transformed an aborted airplane-development program into this
lucrative market. Fighter upgrades most often target three areas: avionics, engines, and armament,
all of which can greatly improve the performance of the vehicle. Following reassembly, painting, and
production testing, upgraded fighters frequently come close in performance to that of later models.

For commercial aircraft the upgrade process is analogous. Here, too, the emphasis is on avionics and
engines, especially the latter. These upgrades can prolong the profitable operation of the aircraft or
allow it to meet the latest noise and emission regulations.

Stanley I. WeissAmir R. Amir

Previous page Aerospace products, manufacturers, and markets

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