ARRANGED SPOILER UPDATE
Once Airbus made the decision to update the spoilers, conducted the trade studies and subsequent materials and process (M&P) development, it then needed a partner to develop the manufacturing processes to fabricate them. Source | Spirit AeroSystems Enter Spirit AeroSystems Smith says, “We studied numerous technologies and traded the benefit before settling on RTM.” The new Airbus spoiler structure is a coreless, monolithic, skin-and-spar design - a significant departure from the legacy design it will replace.Īerial view of Spirit AeroSystems Prestwick campus, adjacent to the Glasgow Prestwick Airport. Moreover, he says, these new high-rate, lower-cost spoilers had to be fully interchangeable fit, weight and aero- dynamic drop-in replacements for the existing spoilers. Peter Smith, head of A320 family wing engineering at Airbus, and his team were challenged to re-engineer the spoilers for rate and cost. Further, as Airbus looked to the future, it knew it had to migrate spoiler manufacture away from hand layup and toward “a highly automated, low-variation, high-quality manufacturing process,” says Latto. However, as Airbus considered higher build rates for the A320 family, a redesign of the spoilers was necessary to realize the cost and rate capabilities of new tech- nologies. Ian Latto, project leader spoilers for Airbus at the company’s Bristol, U.K., location, says the spoilers on the A320 are one of the few wing components that had not needed to be redesigned since the plane’s 1987 debut. At the corner of each leading edge are also smaller metallic attachment points. Each spoiler also features, in the middle of its leading edge, a 200-by-100-millimeter metallic bracket to which the mechanical actuator attaches - in the case of the A320, a rod end actuator. Each spoiler is about 50 millimeters thick at the leading end and tapers to about 5 millimeters at the trailing edge. Each A320 spoiler has different dimensions depending on its location on the wing but, generally speaking, measures 1.8 meters long and 0.7 meter wide.
ARRANGED SPOILER SERIES
There are, on the Airbus A320 series of aircraft - including the A318, A319, A320 and A321 - a total of 10 spoilers, five on each wing. They are, in short, a critical component of aircraft flight function. Spoilers are mechanically actuated and, when deployed, are subjected to considerable mechanical stress from airflow. They are used during flight for roll control to increase the rate of descent without increasing airspeed, and during landing to reduce lift and increase drag to slow the aircraft. These are typically hinged panels or flaps on the rear surface of the wing that are deployed to reduce aircraft lift. Source | CWĮvery commercial aircraft has, as part of each wing, a set of spoilers. Spirit AeroSystems’ resin transfer molded Airbus A320 spoiler, finished, assembled and painted.