By Tim Hepper
Paris (Reuters) – Airbus (Air.Pa) and Boeing (BA) prepare the aerospace industry for a sharp increase in the production of the next generation of work horses to about 100 per month, as they explore the easier plastic materials and robotic assemblies, industry sources said.
Faced with the weak supply chains and the potentially long wait for future engine development, the two largest manufacturers of the world planned are years since the launch of projects to replace their decades of Boeing 737 and Airbus A320 that remain in search.
But they both said on a packed technical audience at a fair in the Paris composites this month that they were already making progress in exploring what a successful generation of models can be made – and in turn how quickly they can be built.
“The goal is to recommend the best transition approach … (up to) the next aircraft program,” said Randy Wilkerson, who represents Boeing in a high-capacity NASA research project called Hikam, told JEC World Conference in Paris.
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The aircraft that future models would replace are made up of aluminum by methods referred to over decades. But composites are considered to be their lighter weight and the flowing shape.
Already strongly used on larger jets such as the Boeing 787 and Airbus A350, composites save fuel and emissions, but are currently needing to take time within autoclaves.
In order to respond to the demand for a much larger number of small planes, both plans manufacturers are increasingly studying production based on new materials such as faster speed thermoplastics.
Speakers said current studies are accepting future production of 80 aircraft per month for Airbus and Boeing: more than twice as much as Boeing produces now, after a safety crisis and higher than the many -delayed Airbus target of 75 per month.
However, sources have told Reuters that both plans manufacturers tell the composite industry that they want to go even more and be ready for speeds of up to 100 per month each, such as blisters equivalent to approximately 200-seater every few hours.
Boeing and Airbus declined to comment.
It is a major gambling for an industry that used composites for the first time in the 1970s, but never at such ambitious pace.
Analysts say that production capacity will be as important a battlefield in tomorrow’s reactive industry as choosing the right designs as the West faces increasing competition from China.
So far, the structural parts for jets such as 787 have been made of a composite, known as a thermostat that maintains its shape and strength, once cured into autoclaves.