A380 assembly timelapse
I understand that it's possible to do an Airbus factory tour if you're in or near Toulouse. My idea of a perfect holiday excursion
D
I was taken on a Boeing factory tour when in (or near) Seattle in 1990, it was well worth the time. They were planning the 777 then.
Mary
First, can I go into the 2 main ways of joining an aircraft's component parts. This called the 'marry up'. Before going any further, there are two terms I will explain. In a fuselage there are frames that go round inside of the skin of the cabin and are placed at set intervals along its length. Then there are stringers that go forward and aft through the whole length of the fuselage and are connected to the skin and frames. The frames and stringers are jig located before the skin of the aircraft gets riveted to them. This type of construction produces a very stiff fuselage, it can only be damaged by hitting the skin and damaging quite a lot of stringers.
Frames can be made out of softened aluminium and be pressed into shape and bath hardened, or machined out of solid.
In one method of marry up, these stringers are extended beyond the front and back of the sub sections so that they can be stiched together inside the adjacent part. This is usually used in smaller aircraft. Less than
20 seats.The next method, which from the poor picture quality of the video, uses a bolt together way of building it. If you look at one part of the video you can see a circle of bolt holes that will be used to bolt one section to another. They are the ones that circle the joint, very close to the skin of the section. Stress inside any section is carefully calculated so as to avert any breaking apart in all flying conditions. The marry up frames will be quite substantion bits of metal.
To answer the OP question, these marry up points are all jig built and while it is possible to get some spring when the jig holding pins are removed to get the component out it, the accuacy is very good. I have never seen a marry up that could not be cured aerodynamically, for a slight mismatch using just a synthetic rubber called Thiokol.
If there is any discrepency between sections, there are 2 ways to get round it depending on the method of marry up. A stitched fusalge can have the panels shape changed by using a tin smith and there will be two matching frames as well. The maximum deviation between adjacent skins would be less that 0.5 mm. On the bolt together method, the accuracy of the jig is so good that the sealant that was used before the marry up is just fingerd into the joint to make it aerodaynamic. The holes for the bolts match perfectly and within the tollerence of the diamter of them.
In the event that there is a skin diferential between marry up joints, a circlular patch can be added that has a taper at both leading and trailing edge, to give it an aerodaynamic cross section. I have only rarely seen this done though.
Wings are attached using similar methods, depending on the marry up technique. The fairings, known as the cuff, (the bit that covers the joint is usually quite soft aluminium that can be re-worked to blend in the joint.
Where the wings are attached to the fusalage, the fusalage at that point is known as the torsion box. What this means is that part of the fusalge is strengthened up to tranfer the lift of the wings to the fusalage. It transfers all the stress to the fusalage and this stress gets distributed evenly throughout the aircraft. This is one reason that aircraft in flight do not lose wings and is the best place to sit if you are a nervous flier, as it usually survives impact, intact, due to its great strength.
Unfortunately, in the event of a bad landing it might not save you as the seat belt will cut you in two :-)
HTH
Dave
In message , harry writes
They've been around for a while, not exactly new
Maybe you should keep away from these things you don't understand, they're only going to confuse you
Owain
only if it's sold as a toy for under 10's,
J. Bull (Haywards Heath) or BigClive, more likely
Owain
... and ghetto blasters and all the other anti-social high-power audio rubbish that we're cursed with these days..
Jim Hawkins
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