CFM LEAP-1A Engine Pylon Design for the Airbus A320neo

Highly committed and reliable engineering team

The Airbus A320neo Family is the new generation single aisle aircraft being developed by Airbus to replace the highly successful current A320ceo family. Equipped with larger and more efficient engines, the new aircraft will offer airlines and operators lower fuel consumption, operating costs and noise impact, as well as reduced NOx emissions.

The new CFM LEAP1-A engine, one of the two selected by Airbus to power the new A320neo family, within a critical phase of the certification process, had to go through a demanding flight test campaign, which required to design a new Pylon adapted to Flight Test Bed and the new CFM Leap-1A.

In February 2014, Aernnova started the work on the detail design phase of the Pylon, supporting Mecachrome Canada and General Electric Aviation in the activities of design and sizing of secondary structure and system installation of Leap-1A FTB Pylon.

CHALLENGES:

• In three months we had to provide a detailed design, fabrication drawings, assembly and dimensioned end of items allocated under the responsibility of Aernnova.
• The preliminary / conceptual design and loads were not completely closed, so it was necessary to provide design solutions as flexible as possible which would maximize the potential to absorb changes in the initial data.
• Need to provide manufacturing data on advance to avoid the impact regarding the expected date of delivery to the customer, allowing the launch of the procurement of materials with more Lead Time before having the configuration fully closed.
• With a tight planning, the number of elements under the responsibility of Aernnova finally doubled from the original scope.

SOLUTIONS:

• FLEXIBILITY. Establish a team of over 50 people in less than two weeks in order to meet the tight schedule.
• COMMUNICATION & TEAM COMMITMENT. Moving a team in-house the customer in charge of ensuring fluid communications between Mecachrome and Aernnova in a context of changing inputs and high volume of complex information exchanged.
• KNOW-HOW. Given the need to provide robust advanced solutions, a highly specialized team was formed, bringing together people with the necessary experience from different sites of Aernnova Engineering.

The manufacture and assembly of CFM Leap1A FTB Pylon finally came within expected deadlines and without any issues reported on the elements designed by Aernnova.