Boeing 787 wing flaw extends inside plane | Hacker News Reader

Boeing 787 wing flaw extends inside plane

seattletimes.nwsource.com

37 pointstortilla18 comments

They are working with novel materials, this sort of trouble isn't unprecedented, look at the de Havilland Comet problems in 1954 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_Comet

We didn't fully understand metal fatigue at the time and these beautifully designed planes started falling out of the sky.

There are going to be unanticipated design problems to work out, it's to be expected.

Anyone who's done an engineering course will have heard about the metal fatigue in the Comet's overhead windows.

What I didn't know was the comet originally was supposed to be equipped with rockets for take-off on short runways, and at high altitude. From Wikipedia:

"The Comet was originally intended to have two hydrogen peroxide powered de Havilland Sprite booster rockets for takeoff under hot and high conditions from airports such as Khartoum and Nairobi. These were tested on 30 flights, but the Ghosts were apparently powerful enough without them. The later Comet 4 was highly rated for its takeoff performance from high altitude locations such as Mexico City"

Cool!

Thanks for the link; that is a really beautiful airplane.

Industrial design of that age was simply beautiful. The use of curves and swept lines you see from that era is really poetic.

I believe a lot of it was informed by our fascination with space and rocket technology. Check out this hoover vac from the 50's, it actually used the air pressure to create pocket of air on which it hovered (on smooth surfaces)

http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/ol-images/la/uploads/55hoove...

Aha! now the story behind makes sense!

for perspective, strongly suggest to read "micks56"'s comment here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=668067

posted a month back on a similar article (Bumpy Ride for Boeing's 787 Dreamliner : http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=668025)

Hi, thanks for the plug!

It looks like my second prediction was wrong. I said that Boeing would release a statement in 3 weeks with a delay of 6 months. It took Boeing 5 weeks to issue the statement, and the delay is TBD, but sounds like 10 months. At least I got the multiplier right (maybe).

Prediction 1 (there will be more delays besides this one) is still TBD. So is Prediction 3 (first non-test delivery to a customer in Fall 2011) is also TBD. Let it ride. I will keep my money on those.

Hm as one commenter there says fixing wing box design flaw with retrofits doesn't make me feel like flying it

This is probably irrational. I sometimes feel the same way when finding bugs in my software. I should have gotten everything right the first time through. But now that you've found the bugs and fixed them, you can be even more confident that there aren't any other bugs lurking in the depths; you've already found them and killed them.

I am also sure this happens all the time. An engineering project late and over cost, and still buggy? Unprecedented!

There is a very good reason why the aircraft industry is very conservative when it comes to introducing new materials, and their testing procedures are about as rigid as it gets.

Good thing they caught this on the ground, there have been way too many accidents with passenger aircraft lately. Losing a plane this big would be a tremendous disaster.

This is going to affect Boeing financially quite a bit as well.

They say right in the article that this flaw would have been unlikely to bring down a plane. The most likely outcome would have been increased maintenance costs for owners.

Right. A normal wing will never bend 150% beyond it's limits in even the worst flight conditions. But it's a testament to how strict the FAA is about engineering new planes.

Watch the similar test done on the 777:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pe9PVaFGl3o

Remember the smug responses from Boeing and the number of US media reports when the Airbus A380 wing failed at 149% and they had to add (gasp) 30kg of extra stiffening.

But didn't they outsource a lot of the work (~70%), including wing design? Not very conservative if you ask me.

http://www.boeing.com/commercial/787family/dev_team.html

They'll test it to the hilt on integration, you can literally depend on that.

Conservative wrt to testing, documentation and procedures as well as a healthy dose of skepticism about new technology.

Just try adding a new piece of avionics to an existing plane or changing something after the airworthiness certificate has been issued.

Apparently this is largely the result of new management. After Alan Mulaly left for Ford, their culture shifted dramatically from the engineering/conservative mindset to a bottom-line-driven outsourcing model.

"Bottom-line-driven" and "aerospace-engineering" don't mix very well...

I hope Boeing gets its act together. It would be a shame to have only one company designing and building big passenger planes...

It definitely seems like your notion is being borne out. Personally, I think it's indicative of a larger cultural problem in the US, so I don't have particular optimism that it will be corrected in time at Boeing, but I certainly hope that it is. It seems unlikely to me that the federal government will allow such a strategic supplier to simply fade away, I just hope they don't end up turning into zombie Boeing.

Boeing is, effectively, "too strategic to fail".

I too find it unlikely that it gets corrected in time, mostly because those who drove Boeing into this mess will keep their bonuses intact while grinding Boeing to a thin shell.

Sad.

But there could be hope. The engineers will end up working somewhere else. And the money to design and build planes will still exist, somewhere. This and maintenance contracts for all those 7*7s around will keep some money flowing.

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