Korea looks to Britain for design expertise

Citation

(1998), "Korea looks to Britain for design expertise", Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology, Vol. 70 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/aeat.1998.12770cab.012

Korea looks to Britain for design expertise

Korea looks to Britain for design expertise

British engineers are designing a new facility to help Hyundai Space and Aircraft Company in Korea to build aircraft wings for McDonnell Douglas' MD95 regional jet.

Airframe components, and particularly wings, are subjected to enormous stress in everyday use, and are therefore required to meet exacting safety requirements. The many processes used during the manufacturing of an aircraft wing are strictly controlled by McDonnell Douglas' own specifications. Many of these processes are highly specialised, and to ensure ultimate product quality, the facilities have to be designed to the highest order. This requires substantial experience in this field.

The wet process section of the new facility is being designed by ERG Environmental Resource Group, a wholly owned subsidiary of AEA Technology. ERG has installed similar facilities in the past for companies such as Short Brothers of Belfast.

During manufacture, the components undergo various wet finishing processes such as etching (also known as chemical milling), anodising and a penetrant crack detection process. The processes will be carried out in five process lines, each essentially a line of tanks through which the components pass using automatically controlled transporters or cranes.

ERG is also designing the water treatment and recycling plus fume extraction and scrubbing systems. The whole plant is computer controlled, with sophisticated software monitoring and archiving details of component processing. This will enable components to be traced in future, if necessary.