Re: Latin American Military News & discussion
Old news but give a fair idea of the current aerospace in Mexico
[video=youtube;Fe76i7Vj5xI]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fe76i7Vj5xI[/video]
Mexican documentary about MD helicopters Mexico, they say several helicopters are build in Apodaca Monterrey, Mexico for the US armed forces and other nations. most Helicopters are MD520 Notar, MD600 and MD500F.
Up to 62% of the helicopters is made in Mexico, final assembly is made in Arizona Meza MD helicopters Plant in the USA.
MD Helicopters Monterrey will manufacture 24 fuselages for Boeing’s Apache helicopter, becoming
the first original equipment manufacturer (OEM) in Mexico to produce fuselages for military use attack
aircraft.
Frisa Forjados reported it has signed a new long-term supply agreement with Rolls-Royce Plc, for forged rings and casings in support of current and future aircraft engine programs. The contract has a value of approximately $200 million, according to Frisa, though the length and other terms were not reports.
Frisa forges seamless rolled rings in carbon and stainless steels, titanium and super alloy metals. In addition to aerospace forgings, it has customers in the power-generation, oil-and-gas, construction and mining, wind, and general industrial markets.
Frisa has three plants in the Monterrey metropolitan area, and is a joint-venture partner with Scot Forge in Ringmasters Manufacturing LLC, in Wayne, MI.
“With this latest agreement, Frisa once again continues to strengthen its position as a leading supplier of forged rings to the aerospace industry,” stated CEO Eduardo Garza.
“Our relationship with Rolls-Royce is founded on many years working with them to provide specialist components for their aerospace and energy business sectors. We are especially pleased to build upon our role as a strategic supplier to Rolls-Royce in support of the Trent family of engines”.
The agreement with Rolls-Royce will support the Trent XWB and Trent 900 engine programs.
TheTrent XWB and 900 are variants of Rolls-Royce’s high-bypass turbofan engines, notably supplied to Airbus for the A350 and Boeing for its 787 Dreamliner, and other commercial aircraft programs. Rolls also assigned a long-term contract recently with another forging group, Firth Rixson Ltd., also for seamless rings.
Frisa’s new contract is its second long-term agreement announced this year. In March it reported a contract with Rolls-Royce’s competitor Pratt & Whitney, for forged rings and casings, to support that company’s PurePower PW1000G turbofan engine program. The P&W contract is valued at more than $150 million.
his is the fan drive gear system for the PurePower PW1000G engine series. P&W’s new jet engines are expected to offer commercial carriers reduced jet-fuel burn rates, lower carbon emissions, reduced engine noise, and other improvements in operating cost factors.
Pratt & WhitneyAdvertisement.
Frisa Forjados reported it has entered into a long-term agreement with Pratt & Whitney, to produce and supply forged rings and casings for the new PurePower PW1000G turbofan engines. Specific terms of the deal were not announced, though the forger indicated it carries a value above $150 million.
Frisa forges seamless rolled rings in carbon and stainless steels, titanium and super alloy metals. It has three plants in the Monterrey metropolitan area, and is a joint-venture partner with Scot Forge in Ringmasters Manufacturing LLC, in Wayne, MI.
The forger noted the new supply agreement builds upon its role as a supplier to the International Aero Engines V2500 engine program. Pratt & Whitney is the majority shareholder of International Aero Engines.
Pratt & Whitney’s PW1000G is a high-bypass geared turbofan engine that has been selected to power several commercial aircraft programs, including the Bombardier CSeries, Mitsubishi Regional Jet, and Embraer's redesigned E-Jet regional aircraft. It is offered as an option for the Irkut MS-21 and Airbus A320neo aircraft.
[video=vimeo;39076547]http://vimeo.com/39076547[/video]
Pierre Harter, engineering manager – M&P, technology readiness and structural certification Learjet, was the featured speaker on the last day of SAMPE Tech
(Oct. 20-24, Wichita, Kan., USA) and provided a great deal of information about the composite materials and manufacturing processes being used to fabricate aerostructures for the forthcoming Learjet 85 business jet.
Wing skins and spars for the plane are manufactured in Belfast, Ireland, using an in-autoclave resin transfer infusion (RTI) process. Fuselage and empennage are manufactured in Querétaro, Mexico, via an out-of-autoclave process. Harter reported that the plane, which is expected to make its first flight in the next few weeks, is the first FAR Part 25 aircraft with composites in the fuselage and wing. He also said that the Learjet 85’s use of composites was not driven chiefly by lightweight, but instead to significantly reduce part count by manufacturing large, integrated structures. In the process, Bombardier learned much about materials characterization, materials management, process development and certification.
Harter described the RTI process to make the wing skins and spars as using dry carbon fiber non-crimp fabric (NCF) that can be quickly cut (by Gerber machines) and placed. The NCF has a binder, which is used in preforming on a male tool, followed by infusion in a female tool. The tool is preheated, the part is bagged and the resin (Cytec’s Cycom 890, for resin transfer molding) is injected under autoclave cure. Stringers are co-cured with the upper and lower wing skins. Harter said the process/material combination is certified by the U.S. Federation Aviation Administration (FAA) for the application.
More challenging, said Harter, was the out-of-autoclave (OOA) material and process development for the fuselage. This was done in close cooperation with Cytec, which provided the resin (Cycom 5320) for this application as well; Harter described the company’s assistance as crucial to the plane’s development.
The fuselage is manufactured in three sections: the nose, the main fuselage and the tail. The main fuselage is 30 ft/9.1m long and represents one of the largest of its kind to be fabricated OOA. Challenges included the fact that the Bombardier facility in Querétaro is at an elevation of more than 6,000 ft/1,829m, which reduces available vacuum pressure compared to lower altitude locations. Further, although Bombardier is adept at developing composite material parameters for autoclave cure, Harter said OOA changed many of the company’s cure management assumptions. Compaction, air removal, resin flow and ply placement had to be adjusted, managed and fine-tuned much differently than they would have been for autoclave-based curing, he said. In addition, the OOA process proved uncommonly sensitive to difficult design features.
Bombardier also had to evaluate breathing methods, bulk and debulk cycles, dwell times and rheology to achieve desired porosity. If the part was cured too quickly, many small voids were generated in the composite. Combating porosity required perfecting the management of resin viscosity over time, Harter said, and was achieved only after extensive trial and error. “Legacy flow and gel times are not adequate,” he noted. Bombardier eventually developed an OOA manufacturing process that produced voids of less than or near 1 percent.
Harter related that after processes were optimized, Bombardier faced the daunting task of achieving FAA certification. Much like the Boeing 787 and the Airbus A350 XWB, intensive use of composites on the Learjet 85 meant Bombardier had to perform extensive testing to satisfy the FAA’s special conditions for certification. Much of this, Harter said, focused on in-flight flammability, post-crash flammability, crashworthiness, durability, toxicity in burn, damage tolerance and thermal expansion at interactions with metals. Results, across the board, were positive. In fact, noted Harter, composite materials on the Learjet 85 outperformed aluminum in flammability and crashworthiness tests — a fact that he believes needs to be emphasized more by the aerospace composites professionals. Composite readiness testing is now complete and certification testing has begun.
Bombardier has committed five full-size Learjet 85 aircraft for testing, which represents significant investment for the company. When asked why Bombardier was going to such effort and expense in regards to material and process development, and certification, Harter said, “Bombardier management knows that composites are the way to go. This is the future.”
Spanish firm Industria de Turbo Propulsores on Friday announced a $160 million project to design and build low-pressure turbines in the central Mexican state of Queretaro.
"This project will put Mexico in the major leagues of this industry, since only a few countries in the world have the proven ability to supply low-pressure turbines," ITP CEO Ignacio Mataix said in announcing the investment plan at the Los Pinos presidential palace, a ceremony also attended by President Felipe Calderón.
General Electric has 21 manufacturing plants in Mexico –more than it has in any other country bar its native US. It also has a presence in the country through the assembly plants of partners such as Mabe, IUSA, Prolec GE and AMI GE. Some 11,000 people are employed directly in Mexico by General Electric, which was listed as one of the best companies to work for by Expansión magazine.
Due to its skilled labor, strategic geographic location and ties with other markets in Latin America and the world, Mexico holds enormous potential for the company’s development, as General Electric’s global executives have duly acknowledged. GE Capital, Energy Infrastructure, Technology Infrastructure and Home & Business Solutions are some of the business units currently operating in Mexico.
These days, however, opportunities aren’t to be had solely on the manufacturing end but also in research and development. And this is the task of GEIQ, an 8,000-square-meter facility where mechanical parts and software are developed; where designs are validated, where diagnostic tests are conducted, where components are certified and where several international airlines come for support and assistance.
Every time you get on a plane,
you have something to thank GEIQ for, not least the GEnx, a next generation turbofan jet engine that translates into fuel savings of 20% for commercial craft like the Boeing 787, 747-8 and 777. The center is currently working on mechanical parts for the world’s largest aircraft, the Airbus A380; solving problems related to the powerful G90 engine and developing some of the 110 clean energy products featured in General Electric’s ecomagination portfolio.
E celebrates 115 years in Mexico inaugurating the new
premises of its Center for Advanced Engineering
The complex was inaugurated by the President of Mexico, Felipe Calderon Hinojosa,
along with Jeffrey R. Immelt, GE's global CEO
The company invested $ 20 million in the new campus
The center will house 500 thousand highly skilled engineers
Mexico, Mexico City, February 17, 2011.- The President of Mexico, Felipe Calderon Hinojosa,
and the global CEO of General Electric, Jeffrey R. Immelt, inaugurated the new premises of
the
Centre for Advanced Engineering in Querétaro (GEIQ), which is one of the most important and
technological research and development complexes in the country, dedicated to the design of
airplane turbines and power generation.
The plant required an investment of $ 24 million and its opening is part of the celebrations for
the 115 years of GE's presence in Mexico. Also, the company is expected to inject an additional
$ 20 million to the complex by 2015, with the aim of expanding its capacity.
This complex, about 8.000 m2 of offices in an area of 4 hectares, is currently designing GEnx
turbine components as used in the Boeing 787, which has the ability to reduce fuel
consumption by up to 20 percent, among other major projects.
The Advanced Engineering Center, formerly known as CIAT, is the only center of its kind in Latin
America and home to 300 thousand highly skilled engineers; by 2012 this figure is expected to
increase to 500 thousand engineers. 20 percent of the personnel working in GEIQ have a
master's degree and 3 percent a doctoral degree.
The event was also presided by the President and CEO of GE Mexico, Gabriela Hernandez; the
President and CEO of GE Latin America, Reinaldo Garcia; and the Business Leader of GEIQ,
Vladimiro de la Mora.
"GE has been committed to the development of the region thanks to the remarkable growth of
the business of the company for past 115 years," said Gabriela Hernandez.
Vladimiro de la Mora said: "The opening of the new campus of GEIQ is an important step not
only for the company but for the entire region. T
he expertise that we require for this complex,
will offer important jobs to Mexican talent; only in the GEIQ, the components for the world's
largest airliner, the Airbus 380, will be developed; in addition to solving the problems of the
more powerful engine, the G90, including many other projects we have.
General Electric
In the last three years, GEIQ has contributed to the design of next-generation turbine components for the civil aviation market, such as the GP 7200 engine for the Airbus A380 (the largest aircraft in the world) or the new GEnX turbine for the Boeing 787 "Dreamliner".
Mexican engineers are collaborating in the design of various components for the Leap-X and Tech-X turbines, reinforcing the competitiveness of our industry's clients by providing improvements in fuel consumption, lower maintenance costs and reduced NOx (pollution) and noise levels, in compliance with ever more stringent global restrictions.
MEXICO, February 21, 2011. - Grupo Kuo (KUO) will end in the first quarter of the year, the specific designation that produce metal parts for Bombardier Aerospace.
In November 2010 and KUO Aerospace Bombardier Aerospace signed a long term contract for the supply of manufactured metal parts . In its earnings release for the fourth quarter of 2010, the Mexican conglomerate indicates that this agreement meets the KUO strategy and commitment to work with major OEM's (original equipment manufacturers) in the aerospace industry.
