Avio Aero is a company in transition. Three years after its acquisition by General Electric was completed, the Italian engine specialist – founded over a century ago – is embarking on the final stage of what chief executive Riccardo Procacci describes as a big change in the way the company does business, both in terms of corporate culture and investment in new production methods such as additive layer manufacturing (ALM).
“We are in the end phase of becoming a GE company,” he says. “Culturally we are almost at the other side of the river. We now have a vision for the next 50 years.” This vision includes spending heavily on the development and support of many key engine programmes, from GE and others. “Go and look at any of our shops – in Brindisi, Naples or Poland – and you will see a construction site. This will really start to take form over the next six to 12 months.”
For an impression of Avio Aero’s chequered heritage, just drive into its main facility just outside Turin. You pass under a bridge emblazoned with the name of one of its former owners, Fiat. The Avio Aero site sits amid the car-maker’s sprawling complex in the suburb of Rivalta. After decades of at first building aircraft and then engines after the war, Fiat Aero – as it was in the early 2000s – was sold from one investment firm to another before being purchased by GE at the end of 2012.
Up to and throughout the 1990s, Avio’s activities were mostly military. It was a member of the Rolls-Royce-led Turbo-Union consortium that built the RB199 for the Panavia Tornado. That was followed by EuroJet, set up to design and support the EJ200 engine for the four-nation Eurofighter Typhoon. Avio Aero’s share in the EJ200 was 21% and the technologies it developed for the programme – including gearboxes, power turbines and combusters – “made us what we are today”, says Procacci.
Its links with GE – and the start of its switch to a mostly civil aerospace business – took off in the late 1990s, after Avio Aero won a 10% stake on the GE90, the exclusive powerplant on the top-selling Boeing 777-300ER that entered service in the mid-2000s and an option on older 777s. Clinching that workshare – mostly on the low-pressure turbine – was the result of applying expertise it gained on the military programmes to civil applications. “The GE90 was a turning point,” says Procacci.
GE programmes now represent about half of Avio Aero’s revenues, with the biggest being the GE90, GEnx (for the Boeing 787) and the CFM International CFM56 and Leap for the 737. On the GE programmes, Avio Aero is focused on low-pressure turbine parts and gearboxes. On the upcoming GE9X for the 777X, it is developing titanium aluminide LP turbine blades using ALM techniques, at a purpose-built plant in Cameri, near Milan’s Malpensa airport.
Procacci says Avio Aero is the first company to design and build such blades for production using an electron beam welding process, which involves welding 0.1mm-thick layers on top of each other using a high-energy electron beam to create a 25cm-long blade. He says the investment in so-called 3D printing is part of Avio Aero’s commitment to becoming a “digitally-driven” business, although he confesses: “It is one of the most difficult things we have ever done.”
Avio Aero is not alone in moving into ALM – many companies, including sister GE facilities in Cincinnati, have invested extensively in the technology. However, the method it has chosen to pioneer, electron beam welding, uses higher temperatures, and is suited to making parts out of hard metals such as titanium. And with its Cameri plant, Avio Aero, even more importantly, has gone perhaps further than anyone in the industry in terms of industrialising the process.
For its non-GE activities, Avio Aero concentrates on gearboxes, including for programmes such as the Pratt & Whitney PW1100G family and its International Aero Engines V2500 predecessor, as well as the Pratt & Whitney Canada PW308 and PW150. Military now represents about 30% of its turnover, with the EJ200 – Avio Aero assembled and maintains all the engines for the Italian air force – and the EuroProp TP400 for the Airbus A400M among its programmes.
Cracks found in the TP400’s power gearbox – made by Avio Aero – have been a recent concern. Speaking in April, Harald Wilhelm, chief financial officer of Airbus Group, said the company had launched a “thorough technical and industrial evaluation” to find a solution, but warned of “serious challenges for production and customer deliveries” of the A400M this year. He added that he expects “industrial and financial support” from Avio Aero to address the problem.
In terms of technology development, Avio Aero is playing a key role in the new GE engine for Textron Aviation’s Advanced Turboprop, expected to launch this summer. The 1,300shp (956kW) GE93, which was confirmed as the aircraft’s powerplant in November, will take on the ubiquitous Pratt & Whitney PT6A, with the development spearheaded by GE’s former Walter subsidiary in Prague. However, engineers from Avio Aero are working closely with their Czech colleagues.
Another flagship programme is Airbus Helicopters’ LifeRCraft follow-on project from the high-speed X3 technology demonstrator, funded under the European Union’s Clean Sky 2 research and development programme. Avio Aero is designing the propeller and main gearbox – what Procacci calls the “power gearbox of the future” – for the rotorcraft. The company is augmenting its skills in gearboxes by building a second power gear test facility in Turin.
The investment is not just in developing product itself. Avio Aero is also focusing strongly on how it develops and builds these products. Procacci is a believer in the concept of the “brilliant factory”, which he describes as a manufacturing site capable of continuously self-improving its output and processes by gathering, transmitting and analysing data in real time. This, he says, allows for a quicker product development cycle and instant improvements in manufacturing efficiency.
For Avio Aero, the transition appears to be far from over.
Source: Flight Daily News
