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Goodrich ramps up for A380 landing gear
Assembly of the gears in France allows for optimisation of the value chain. The Goodrich Toulouse site will also provide a local support centre for the Airbus assembly line. "Assembling the word's largest commercial gears involves the co-ordination of hundreds of components. Many of these components are being partially assembled at other sites. Those assemblies then have to be assembled in a matter of days in order to meet the needs of just in time delivery to the Airbus Flight Assembly Line," said Goodrich's Landing Gear President, Brian Gora. The addition of the A380 landing gear assembly at the company's Toulouse facility is an expansion of the scope of work the site currently performs. The Toulouse team currently manages jet engine integration, fairings preparation, spares distribution for Goodrich's Aerostructures and Landing Gear teams and flight line support for the company's Aircraft Seating Products and Wheels and Brakes. The Toulouse A380 team will be training personnel, setting up new business systems and acquiring all approvals. Existing space within the Toulouse site will be modified to accommodate the A380 assembly and some testing of the gears. Most of the A380 testing will be conducted at the company's site in Oakville, Canada, where Goodrich has constructed a new test facility to accommodate the testing of both the wing and body landing gears. Completed in September of 2002, the new test lab represents the largest test programme ever completed by Goodrich's Landing Gear team. The facility encompasses 2,100 square meters of floor space and includes a dedicated control room, clean rooms and pump rooms. The central feature of the test facility will be a Super Rig for structural testing which includes the strength and fatigue testing of the A380 wing and the body landing gears. The rig rests in a cavity 55 metres long, 12.1 metres wide and 1 metre deep. The test structure completely fills the cavity and stands approximately 8 meters high. The steel requirements for the rig are enormous -- it requires three miles of linear beam, over 1000 tons of steel and in excess of 16000 bolts. In addition to the Super Rig, endurance test rigs are being added to accommodate the retraction endurance test and the steering endurance testing of the body landing gear bogie beam. The drop testing of the landing gear will be performed on-site in a separate building. In addition to the main landing gear, Goodrich is also providing Airbus with the primary and standby air data systems for the A380 as well as both primary and secondary conventional and electro-hydraulic flight control systems and the variable frequency electrical power system. Goodrich is also supplying the Rear Secondary Structure for the A380. The Goodrich structure will accommodate both the Rolls-Royce and Engine Alliance engine types chosen for the aircraft. The Rear Secondary Structure is the second A380 pylon fairing structure to be awarded to Goodrich. Airbus also selected Goodrich to supply the adjacent Pylon Aft Fairing. Goodrich will also be supplying the cargo mechanical system to the A380 and Goodrich Hella Aerospace Lighting Systems will be supplying 23 different LED-based exterior lighting components for the aircraft. In addition, Rolls- Royce has selected Goodrich to build the centre and rear fan case sections for the Trent(R) 900 engine option and Goodrich will be supplying the entire sensor suite and the fuel delivery systems for that engine.
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Goodrich Corporation's Landing Gear team is on schedule to deliver the first A380 main landing gear to Airbus in May 2004. Components manufactured at a variety of Goodrich sites in North America and Europe will be shipped to the company's facility in Toulouse, in France, for final assembly.