NDT
The Airbus Wing Integration Centre
(AWIC) at Filton, near Bristol, in the UK
is one of the most comprehensively
equipped and advanced testing
facilities in the commercial aviation sector.
The Airbus Wing Integration Centre (AWIC), which
will have an official opening later this year, will be the
European aircraft-maker’s lead site for testing its Wing of
Tomorrow program. AWIC also brings together the four
different engineering groups within Airbus that will
develop the wings for the company’s future aircraft:
Airbus Central Research and Technology, Research and
Technology Demonstrators, Structures Test and
Materials and Processes.
“We wanted to harmonize techniques, reduce the
duplication of activities and introduce some new
innovative tools to enable a more efficient end-to-end
process,” says Paul Richardson, Airbus lead test engineer,
Materials, Processes and Tests, based at AWIC.
Engineers at AWIC, and more generally within design
and testing at Airbus, measure strain and deformation
with static and fatigue structural testing. The results
from the tests are used to validate analysis and finite
element analysis simulations. Richardson says, “We are
also looking at displacement of airframe structures under
simulated loading, such as wing bending, twist and
pressurization – any kind of loading the aircraft might
see in real life. The performance of structures in flight is
then examined at Airbus HQ in Toulouse, France.”
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STRONG WALLS AND
FOUNDATIONS
The design and construction
of AWIC presented a cleansheet
opportunity to develop a
structural testing facility. The
AWIC building is therefore dominated
by a flexible hangar space for testing
aircraft components, from smaller components up
to full-size wings. The hangar features an imposing
13m wide by 10m high steel “Strong Wall” and a 40m
long, 18m wide, 2m thick “Strong Floor”.
One of the key features of the hangar is its
reconfigurability for different tests. The wall is modular
and can be split into two 110-tonne halves that can be
moved around on the floor. Richardson says the wall will
probably only be moved using cranes every three to five
years at most.
“The integration of the wall was important in the
overall design of the building. We had to work closely
with the civil engineers, who tend to work with
tolerances that are in centimetres, compared to our
tolerances of millimetres and less. The differences made
for some interesting conversations.”
The floor features a 1m by 1m grid of anchor points.
Each individual anchor point has a capacity of around
500kN and has two tie-down bolts that go down 2m. The
bolts are the same as the ones used to anchor suspension
bridge cables into the ground. There is a total of 782
1 // Aerial view of the
Advanced Wing Integration
Centre at FIlton, UK
2 // The centre hosts
equipment to enable the
in-depth examination of
composite materials
2
1
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