A well-practised industrial choreography is being repeated this autumn within Embraer’s E-Jet manufacturing base in Sao Jose dos Campos, Brazil.
This time, the dance involves the first copy of an improved new product – the re-engined and re-winged Embraer 190 E2 – moving through the final stages of the E-Jet family’s newly revamped production system.
When Embraer brought the original E-Jet family into production 15 years ago, the company reused many of the same facilities that were built in the 1970s to produce a series of small regional turboprops and, later, regional jets. The arrangement served to minimise the manufacturer’s capital investment as it embarked on a new family of large regional jets, and now accommodates a rejuvenation of both the product and the production process.
Like the original E-Jet series, the E190-E2, then the E195-E2 and finally the E175-E2, will now pass through the same maze of hangars in Embraer’s production system, but this time a formerly manual process will be heavily automated.
The first E190-E2 fuselage has recently completed assembly in the same F-60/1 building along a line parallel to the original E-Jet, with automated drilling machines replacing manual labour.
Meanwhile, the larger, modernised wings for the same aircraft have now completed assembly in a newly automated drilling and riveting line in the F-107/1 hangar. Both wing sections will now be mated to the fuselage in the F-107/2 bay, before the almost-completed aircraft is towed to the cavernous F-220 building for final assembly, where workers will attach a pair of Pratt & Whitney PW1900G geared turbofan engines to strengthened wings and will complete systems and interior installation inside the fuselage.
“We are progressing very well,” says Luis Carlos Affonso, Embraer’s chief operating officer. “We are very happy with the physical progress.”
It has been nearly four years since Embraer committed to launch the E2 aircraft family, shortly before the Dubai air show in 2011. The Brazilian manufacturer’s announcement came less than three months after Boeing launched the 737 Max programme, which followed Airbus’s lead with the A320neo concept. Both commercial aircraft titans had decided to re-engine rather than replace their still-popular narrowbody stars with a presumably larger family of new aircraft.
To Embraer, those decisions seemed to leave the company with little choice. Rather than develop a new aircraft optimised to occupy the 110-150-seat space once expected to be vacated by Airbus and Boeing, the Brazilian manufacturer instead launched a programme to re-engine, re-wing and in some cases to stretch the largest three of the four variants of the E-Jet family.
Not surprisingly, the E2 development process is so far following a similar timeline to the 737 Max. Boeing introduced the first 737 Max 8 into final assembly in Renton this month, around the same time as the first E190-E2 was moved into the fuselage-and-wing hangar in Sao Jose dos Campos. The timelines begin to diverge starting next year, with the 737 Max entering service in 2017 and the first E190-E2 to be delivered in 2018.
The difference in timing is explained by the complexity of Embraer’s project. Though stopping short of a risky, clean-sheet development project, Embraer accepted a far more challenging work statement for the E2 project than Airbus and Boeing adopted for their purely re-engined models.
First, Embraer’s programme would require two major engine variants: the PW1700G for a stretched E175-E2 and the PW1900G for the E190-E2 and stretched E195-E2 (the original E170 was dropped in the E2 series).
Separate, all-new wings would then have to be developed for the E175-E2 and E190/195-E2. Perhaps most ambitiously, Embraer also decided to apply a full fly-by-wire system in the smallest commercial aircraft to date, with the 78-seat E175-E2 extending a progression of innovation beginning with the 125- to 240-seat A320 family, 110- to 160-seat Bombardier CSeries family and the 95-seat Sukhoi Superjet.
That combination of new engines, new wings and a full fly-by-wire system has proved already successful in the market. Since 2008, Bombardier has managed to attract only 243 firm orders across both variants of the CSeries. Embraer started accepting orders for the E2 aircraft family only two years ago, but has already collected 325 firm orders. The backlog also shows a comfortable balance, with 150 total orders by two customers for the E175-E2, 85 orders from four customers for the E190-E2 and 90 orders from four customers for the E195-E2.
“We are very glad with the way the family is laid out. You can see that in our orders. We have basically orders for all types – the 175, 190 and 195,” Affonso says. “We believe there will be applications for all three models.”
Embraer’s task now is to keep the programme on schedule, so the ramp-up of E190-E2 deliveries in 2018 allows a smooth transition from the E1 programme.
Assembly of the structure of the first aircraft at the Sao Jose dos Campos factory is a critical part of the programme and so is another operation taking place about 17km away, at another Embraer facility in Eugenio de Melho. It is here that Embraer is assembling and testing the avionics, electronics, power systems and – most importantly – the fly-by-wire system for the E2 family.
The “iron bird”, which simulates the electronic control systems, is already operational, along with ground testing rigs for dozens of systems, including the Honeywell avionics system and the air management system.
But the full fly-by-wire system poses the most intriguing development. P&W’s engines account for 11% of the improvement in fuel efficiency claimed for the E2 family. The modernised airfoils and longer span of the wings contribute another 3.5% to the fuel efficiency gain.
In addition to enhancing safety, the fly-by-wire system also adds 1.5% to the fuel efficiency total. In a conventional aircraft, the centre of gravity is located forward of the centre of lift, so the horizontal tailplane is designed to exert a downward force, which counters the natural tendency of the nose to also pitch downward.
By introducing fly-by-wire, however, aircraft designers can reverse the force exerted by the horizontal tailplane, allowing both its surfaces and the wings to produce lift in cruse flight. The centre of gravity shifts rearward, but the fly-by-wire system can make constant corrections to keep the nose from tending to pitch upwards.
Embraer’s experience with fly-by-wire controls began with a rudimentary system developed for the Italian/Brazilian AMX-T project. Embraer first introduced a full fly-by-wire system on the Legacy 500 business jet, but development delays held up the project by two years. For the E-Jet E2 family, Embraer has shifted to a new supplier. For decades, Moog has been a key supplier of fly-by-wire systems for Boeing and is now providing the E2 family with primary control-actuation and flight-control computers, plus the software for the control laws and the operating system that integrates the control laws into the computers.
“The test benches are operational, which is a big achievement to have the benches configured to test the software,” Affonso says. “And we are starting to test the fly-by-wire software. Several other loads are planned but, so far, so good.”
Despite the move to a fly-by-wire system, Embraer is designing the E2 cockpit with the same yokes found in the E1 family. The Legacy 450/500 and the KC-390 projects have familiarised Embraer with sidestick controllers in fly-by-wire aircraft. An overriding design goal for the E2 was to retain as much commonality with the E1 as possible, with a target to limit transition pilot training for E1 pilots to no more than three days.
Re-engining programmes usually start with a mature production system for the fuselage, but there are limits to how much commonality Embraer wanted to carry over into the E2 programme.
The larger, heavier and redesigned wings, for example, required Embraer to tweak the internal structure of the E190-E2’s centre fuselage section, Affonso says. The new design also incorporates structural changes to improve service life.
“For instance, corrosion is something that can be an issue in a fuselage, especially in areas like the floor beams and the galleys and doors areas,” he says. “In this fuselage, we have added titanium caps over the beams so that the airplane is virtually corrosion-proof in those areas.”
The fly-by-wire system for the E2 family is not the only contribution from experience gained through the KC-390 and Legacy 500 programmes. In both projects, Embraer began to introduce automation into its production system.
“We are very fortunate that we are between executive aviation, defence, and commercial. We have been developing several airplanes almost continuously. So if you look at the Legacy 500s, the KC-390 and the E2 – these are, let’s say, a continuous progression. We have lots of automation already on the Legacy 500 and the KC-390, and on the E2 we are going for a further step,” Affonso says.
Automated machines are designed by Electro-Impact, based in Mulkiteo, Washington, and the designer of robotic systems used by Boeing and a host of aerospace manufacturers. The machines for the E2 family are used to drill thousands of holes in the wing assemblies, seal the openings and then install the rivets.
“When you compare the E2 to the E1, there is a big leap in many senses, but if you think, we have done four new platforms from E1 to E2,” Affonso says. “So you see that it’s a low-risk approach for technology introduction.”
Source: Cirium Dashboard
