|
A380 Gear Ready to Rise
Later this month Airbus UK is to test for the first time the undercarriage of the mighty Airbus A380 superjumbo on its full-size landing gear test rig. The rig—at 16.7 meters high by 39 meters wide and 44.5 meters long the largest of its type ever built—rests in a purpose-built, £1.7 million building at Bristol-Filton.
The A380 has 22 wheels grouped on five bogies—two four-wheel bogies under each wing, and two six-wheel bogies mounted side-by-side under the fuselage. The wheels are arranged to distribute the aircraft's weight evenly, allowing it to stay within the runway and taxiway weight limitations of most modern airports.
The largest components—body and wing landing gears—were shipped in January by manufacturer Goodrich from its Oakville, Ontario site. At 18.5 feet tall, a single A380 body landing gear supports approximately 167 tons—that's the equivalent of holding up two-and-a-half Airbus A320s including passengers and baggage, 150 compact cars, or five blue whales, according to the inspired Goodrich marketing department. Still not convinced that this is the biggest airliner in the world?
Over the course of 2004, Goodrich will be delivering up to five main landing gear sets to Airbus at Toulouse, while Messier-Dowty plans to build around eight nosewheel assemblies this year. The 4.8-meter-high twin nose gear assembly is the largest landing gear Messier-Dowty has ever supplied to Airbus.
"We have already started our Ground Test Requirements program," a spokesperson for Airbus UK told Show News. She explained that before fitting the main gear to the test rig, every small 'black box' (and there are a lot of them) had to be checked in isolation before being connected to other related equipment. Every bit of software had to be verified before the attachment of the landing gear and its many doors. Also into the equation go the complex hydraulic systems, electrics, the five bogies carrying 22 wheel hubs and their associated tires, and a braking system capable of stopping this 550-seat, 1.2-million-pound maximum take-off weight behemoth. Once completed, the test rig is due to raise the gear for the first time at the end of July.
The first A380 is due to be rolled out at Airbus' Toulouse headquarters in late January or early February 2005, according Messier-Dowty chairman Louis Le Portz. Airbus hopes that the superjumbo will make its public flying debut at the Paris Air Show next June. First customer deliveries are planned for March 2006. Singapore Airlines is due to be the first to fly fare-paying passengers, according to Airbus' chief commercial officer John Leahy.
Airbus is in Hall 4, Stand A14 and Chalet D5-9 here at the show.
—Mike Vines
back
to ShowNews home
|
