By Jon Ostrower

The 787 is Boeing's grand innovation, nose to tail, wingtip to wingtip. The
aircraft's majority-composite design is at the heart of the airframer's leap
in the use of new materials and systems. At 50% by weight, the higher
strength-to-weight ratio of carbon fibre is intended to replace the
traditional architecture of Boeing's metallic wings and fuselage on its
earlier narrow and widebody commercial aircraft.
Of Boeing's three big leaps on the 787, its materials and its systems are
the biggest game-changers for customers, requiring adaptation by the
airlines that will put its technologies into use, with the goal of reducing
fuel burn by 20% and operation cost by 10%. Of the 20% improvement
in fuel burn, Boeing estimates 8% is engine-driven, 3% from the
systems, 3% from the majority composite airframe, 3% from
aerodynamics and a further 3% from the integration of all the
technologies,
The seven monolithic carbon laminate fuselage barrels eliminate
longitudinal joins on the majority of the aircraft, aiming to significantly
increase its fatigue life and cut its heavy maintenance interval in half.
The composite primary structure also allowed Boeing to significantly
increase the size of the 787's windows to 48.3cm (19in) with electrochromatic dimmable glass.
The composite manufacturing processes from one facility to another with slight variations - remain uniform across the programme's primary
structural suppliers - Spirit AeroSystems in the US, Alenia in Italy and
Kawasaki, Fuji and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in Japan. Carbon fibre
tape is laid down on a mould or mandrel either by hand or automatic
fibre placement (AFP) machines, cured in a high-temperature autoclave,
trimmed, drilled, non-destructively inspected, painted with primer and
then flowed to the assembly or build-up process.

There are significant differences, depending on the size and purpose of

the parts, which range in size from floor beams all the way up to 19.4ftwide (5.91m-wide) fuselage barrels and the 98ft-long wing skins. For
lightning strike protection, Boeing has embedded a thin wire mesh into
the carbon laminate, which in conjunction with an aircraft-wide current
return network provides a return ground plane for all the equipment
installed in the aircraft.
The aircraft's wings, manufactured and assembled by Mitsubishi in
Nagoya, Japan, and also carbon laminate, are assembled with singlepiece top and bottom wing skins and joined with aluminium ribs and
composite spars. The structure of the aircraft's Alenia-built horizontal and
Boeing-built vertical stabilisers also employs carbon laminate for primary
structure, replicating Boeing's previous experience on the 777's
composite empennage.
Carbon sandwich has a more limited implementation on the Goodrich
laminar flow nacelles, and the aircraft's elevators, rudder, spoilers, raked
winglets and inboard movable leading edge. Fibreglass sandwich
accounts for the forward and leading and trailing edge structure of the
horizontal and vertical stabilisers, along with the wing forward and
trailing leading edges and the wing-to-body fairing.
MORE-ELECTRIC ARCHITECTURE
The biggest sea change under the 787 carbon fibre skin can be found in
its more-electric bleedless systems architecture, aimed at reducing
engine fuel burn by allowing the power extraction to work on demand,
managing the pull of electricity as it is needed from the engine's
generators rather than bleeding air from the engine when it is more
efficiently used for propulsion.
As one of the programme's earliest systems suppliers, Hamilton
Sundstrand was first selected in 2004 to supply nine systems for the
787, including the aircraft's environmental control system (ECS),

auxiliary power system (APS), electrical power generating and start

system (EPGSS) and ram air turbine (RAT).
Without a pneumatic system seen on all other Boeing aircraft, the
airframer developed an electric engine start system with Hamilton
Sundstrand anchored by two 250kVA variable frequency starter
generators on each General Electric GEnx-1B or Rolls-Royce Trent 1000
engine and two 225kVA generators in the auxiliary power unit. The six
generators provide up to 1.45MW of electricity fed through nine power
panels that manage and distribute electrical power to a myriad of aircraft
systems.
The hydraulic system's biggest difference from previous Boeing aircraft
is the power source for its three independent systems, all electrically
driven, supporting the primary flight control actuators, landing gear, nose
gear steering, thrust reversers and leading and trailing edge flaps with
5,000 pounds per square inch (psi) pumps. Both left and right systems
feature engine-mounted and driven pumps along with an electric motor
pump, while the centre system has twin large electric motor pumps - one
that runs throughout a flight and the other employed during takeoff and
landing.
Rather than use the hydraulic actuation on the main landing gear brakes,
Boeing would use an electrically driven carbon brake-by-wire system
supplied by either Goodrich or Messier-Bugatti, while the GKN-supplied
wing anti-ice system also follows Boeing's more-electric architecture,
eliminating the use of hot bleed air to melt any forming ice on the wings,
opting to use a heater mat technology instead.
The more-electric systems provide cabin pressurisation, run by
electrically driven compressors on the ECS that provide a cabin altitude
of 6,000ft (1,830m), compared with 8,000ft on previous Boeing aircraft.
The 787 is the world's first commercial jetliner to employ a required
nitrogen generation system from its first day of operation, a certification

requirement developed in the wake of the 1996 TWA Flight 800 disaster,
caused by an explosion of fuel vapour in an unused fuel tank.
Aerodynamically, the Honeywell-supplied flight control system enables
the 787's three-axis fly-by-wire, using the aircraft's ailerons for
manoeuvre load alleviation and elevator for active gust load alleviation.
The 787's wing also adapts to changing gross weight conditions,
optimising the camber of the wing through the trailing edge variable
camber (TEVC) system moving it up or down by 1.5e_SDgr from its
neutral position.
Fourteen drooped spoilers also eliminate the need for fore flaps, bridging
the gap between the wing and extended flaps, while also serving as
traditional spoilers dumping lift on landing and providing slowing drag
while in flight. Flaperons provide additional flight control functionality,
drooped when acting with the high lift system, roll control as ailerons and
upward deflection as spoilers on landing.
Reducing external drag further, Boeing has incorporated a passive
laminar flow system on the engine nacelles by maintaining a smooth
boundary layer of air, providing each pair of nacelles a white colour by
default for customers to apply a universal paint thickness designed to
preserve the flow over a larger area.
COME CORE BRAIN
The heart of the 787's integrated systems architecture is founded on the
GE Aviation Common Core System (CCS) aimed at increasing reliability,
lowering aircraft weight and cost by implementing a common processing
and data network to drive the aircraft's systems. The system is tied
together through Rockwell Collins' fibre optic ethernet-based avionics full
duplex (AFDX) command data network (CDN) allowing communication
between modules with the AIRNC 664 standard.

The modular nature of the CCS, which is made up of twin Common

Computing Resources that are housed in the forward electronics
equipment (EE) bay below the flight deck and ahead of the forward
cargo compartment, allows the system to be both scaled and upgraded
without a comprehensive redesign for each change, allowing the aircraft
to acquire new capabilities without major modifications.

http://www.flightglobal.com/features/787dreamliner/systems/