The A380 is designed to meet the growing demand for international air travel. It is the world’s only twin-deck, four-aisle airliner. With 555 seats, it can carry 35% more passengers than the next largest plane and claims to give airlines the opportunity “to deliver unparalleled comfort in every class and more open space for passengers to stretch their legs”. It will be able to travel 16,000km (9,942) without touching down. The Boeing 747, in contrast, can carry 400 passengers 14,000km.
The A380 is being built across Europe. The cabin interior is produced in Buxtehde and Laupheim in Germany. Plants for the fuselage (forward and aft) are spread across Germany in Hamburg, Nordenham, Bremen and Varel. Cockpit and centre fuselage come from sites in France at Meaulte, Saint Nazaire and Nantes. The wings are made in Filton and Broughton, UK and assembled in Broughton. The tailplane and landing door gears are made in Spain at Puerto Real, Getafe and Illescas. The whole thing is assembled in Toulouse, France, which is also Airbus headquarters.
With other Airbus planes, fully equipped aircraft sections are air-lifted by the Airbus Super Transporter A300-600ST cargo plane to the final assembly lines. But the A380 is too big for this and so complete aircraft sections are delivered by sea and road to Toulouse for structural assembly, final equipping (including engine installation) and production test flights. The aircraft then flies to Hamburg for cabin furnishing, systems installation, customisation and painting in customer colours.
A carbon fibre centre wingbox, carbon composites. advanced metallic materials and increased pressure in hydraulic systems have saved 10t-15t of dead weight, reducing the total weight of the plane to 240t.
A freight version of the A380 is scheduled to enter service in 2008. This A380F will carry 150t (330,000 lbs) over 10,400km on its three decks. In comparison, the US military’s tank-transporting C-5 Galaxy can carry only a payload of 135t. Airbus claims that by eliminating the need for intermediate stops, the A380F will reduce freight transport costs.
The A380 final assembly line is currently set up to produce four A380s a month but has the capacity to produce more if required. To date, Airbus has received 160 orders.
Contributing subcontractors include just about every major and most minor names in the European aerospace industry, and their suppliers include many of the major names of the crane industry. In some cases, special cranes and attachments have been required for handling precious components such as wings.
Leading the way in Toulouse, on the crane front, is Ateliers de Chainette (ADC), France’s leading producer of overhead travelling cranes. ADC has supplied more than 120 cranes to the aerospace industry, including both Airbus and major supplier EADS.
For production of the A380, ADC has supplied EOT cranes ranging from 29m up to 62m span to Airbus plants in Nantes, Toulouse and Saint Nazaire. In Nantes, the cranes are equipped with rotating crabs for turning loads. In Saint Nazaire Airbus has installed six cranes. To handle the complete forward stump of the A380 (and also the smaller A340) there is a 32t safe working load (SWL) crane with a 31.5m span. There are four hoists, each with a 16.5t SWL, with synchronised motions for lifting, cross travel and long travel. There is also a 17m-span, 66t-SWL crane that also has four synchronised 16.5t hoists.
Wings
The Broughton factory in the UK manufactures wings for all Airbus aircraft, but the A380’s wings presents special handling challenges since the wings are 43m (140ft) long. Wing production is a technical collaboration between Metal Improvement Company and BAe Systems, the UK partner in the Airbus programme.
At the UK wing assembly plant, Granada Material Handling supplied and installed 24 special cranes, 12 lift assemblies and a 10t transporter crane under a contract worth £3.5m (E5m). Of the 24 cranes 12 are ‘Staging’ cranes and 12 are ‘In jig’ cranes. The jigs are split into port and starboard sides and there eight cranes per jig.
Street Crane also supplied and installed some special cranes here for processing the wing panels. Seven double girder Street cranes have been installed with a maximum safe working load of 5t. All units have Street ZX hoists and two of the cranes are fitted with a turntable. Some of the cranes have twin hoists with load summation. The wing panels are loaded and unloaded from shot peening machines, transported along the bay and rotated through 180 degrees for location in storage racks. (Shot peening curves the wing and improves fatigue resistance).
Because the wing panels are both large and light, the potential for load swing had to be eliminated. Thyrister soft-start control gives progressive acceleration and deceleration on both long and cross travel to keep loads under control.
Fuselage
Fuselage sections are produced by Airbus Deutschland GmbH in Nordenham. Gentle handling and turning is required here too. For this plant Demag Cranes & Components, supplied three double girder cranes.
The fuselage sections are up to 10.8m long, 6.7m wide and 2.3m high, and weigh up to 1.6t. They have to be suspended from four points when being handled, and when they are rotated between horizontal and vertical. To enable the cranes to co-ordinate the necessary five directions of load movement in parallel, Demag fitted them with rotating crabs. Two traversing crabs travel on the rotating H frame, which spans 7m. Two travelling hoists, which support the load at four points, raise and lower loads beneath each of the 11m-long beams.
Two of the cranes are in the large section assembly area and have spans of 37m and 39m. They transport sections of fuselage skin to a joining station, swivel them from vertical to horizontal and transfer them to the station. Here, Airbus joins three to five sections of skin to create a fuselage section, and then the riveting process follows on.
The third crane, spanning 32m, is in the fuselage section shipping area. It removes the complete section from the joining station, returns it to vertical, and puts it on an automatic guided vehicle, which takes it to the surface treatment. After that, the crane takes the component back off the guided vehicle to the transport frame of a container in which the parts are shipped for assembly into larger sections at the Hamburg factory.
Frequency inverter drives control load sway and vibrations that could damage the fuselage sections. Hoists are automatically synchronised if all four ropes are tensioned with 35kg to control movement of the load. Photocells prevent collision between the fuselage sections and the rotating crab. Here again, safety brake in the hoists will hold the load should the gearbox fail.
All three cranes travel at speeds of up to 40m/min, the crabs at up to 30m/min. Maximum hoisting speeds are 8m/min under load and 16m/min without loads. Long and cross travel are limited to 5m/min. Infinitely variable rotation motion of up to 0.8 of a revolution per minute means that components can be positioned with millimetre accuracy, according to Demag.
As well as the double girder travelling cranes, Airbus Deutschland also has four double-girder suspension cranes from Demag in a high-bay warehouse next door.
