The Airbus A380 super-jumbo is taking shape and many suppliers at Asian Aerospace are celebrating milestone deliveries as they play their part in the production of the prototype.
One such firm is Goodrich with the first Airbus A380 body and wing landing gears being shipped from its facility in Oakville, Ontario, to the Airbus test facility in Bristol, UK. The gear will be installed in Airbus's landing system test rig.
At 18.5ft (6m) tall, a single A380 body landing gear supports approximately 167t. That is the equivalent of holding up two Airbus A320 aircraft (including passengers and their luggage), 150 compact cars, or five blue whales.
Over the course of this year, Goodrich will be delivering up to five sets of landing gear to Airbus as well as building and testing a number of sets for flight qualification in Goodrich's new 22,000ft2 state-of-the-art test facility in Oakville.
In addition to landing gear, the A380 will enter service with several technological advances from Goodrich. In 2001 Airbus chose Goodrich Aircraft Interior Products' technology for the aircraft's evacuation system.
Goodrich is also supplying cabin attendant and cockpit occupancy seats, innovative HID and LED-based exterior lighting, variable-frequency technology for the aircraft's power generation, and flight controls that use the latest power-by-wire technology in place of more conventional hydraulic methods.
Goodrich is also supplying the primary and standby air data systems and automatic ice detection system, which detects ice build-up and automatically activates the aircraft's ice protection system. In addition, Goodrich's cargo system and several structural components will be on board.
Goodrich has also been selected by Rolls-Royce to provide a number of products for the Trent 900 engine option including an engine sensors suite, which measures a wide variety of engine functions as well as the engine's fuel delivery system.
Source: Flight Daily News
