Boeing has announced the formation of a 20-member team of U.S.
and international partners to devise what the company calls "open
and elegant" designs for the airplane's systems. Mike Sinnett,
7E7 director of systems integration, will lead the new team.
Team members will include ECE Zodiac, Messier-Bugatti and Thales
from France; Diehl and Liebherr from Germany; Japan's Teijin Seiki;
BAE Systems, FR-HiTemp and Smiths Aerospace from the UK; and
a wide range of U.S. contractors including Honeywell, Rockwell
Collins and Hamilton Sundstrand. The partners' expertise extends
from avionics, hydraulic and electrical power systems to environmental
control and inflight entertainment.
Boeing is looking for "elegant" systems, according to
7E7 engineering VP Walt Gillette, "that perform new tasks
but don't add complexity, cost or weight." New functions,
for example, will include airplane health management to predict
failures and reduce maintenance costs, and advanced environmental
controls to make passengers more comfortable on 8,000 nmi flights.
Boeing has talked about the possibility of providing the 7E7 with
a lower cabin altitude than current aircraft, combined with a
system to increase humidity in the cabin.
Boeing has already said that the 7E7 will probably have a mixture
of electrical and hydraulic actuation and an electrically powered
environmental control system, eliminating bleed air from the engines.
Cabin internet access will be built-in, and the inflight entertainment
system is likely to be net-based, eliminating separate onboard
media players and storage in favor of multi-purpose servers and
hard drives.
The new systems, though, will also be "open," says Gillette,
allowing new technology to be incorporated easily without redesigning
the aircraft. "Anticipating the need to accommodate improvements,
even if we don't know what they will be, means that we design
the aircraft to be flexible and adaptable."
Later this year members of the systems integration team will compete
to become suppliers to the 7E7 program.
