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Costly Airbus paint flaw goes wider than the Gulf
- belter 5y ago3 months ago.... "Qatar Airways grounds 13 Airbus A350s as fuselage degrading" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28098888 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28098888
- m0llusk 5y agoArguably this is a much greater problem than it at first appears because it exposes a serious and fundamental problem with our materials development processes. Currently development of new products is going faster than we can understand the qualities and limitations of those products. How exactly this happened and what is the best response is not clear. Because of how these materials are made a failure of the exterior coating can potentially render that whole aircraft unfit for safe use similar to how metal fatigue can lead to progressive cracking. What kind of exterior would be best for such a radical carbon fiber structure being exposed to extremes of heat and cold and pressure is wide open question, and how best to patch a damaged structure is also difficult to asses.
- NikolaeVarius 5y ago> Arguably this is a much greater problem than it at first appears You can make the argument. Doesn't mean its true or has any relevance.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- erect_mom 5y agoon the contrary, it absolutely makes it true and relevant.
- mirekrusin 5y agoAlso if they didn't bother to test such relatively straight forward thing as paint for those conditions, what kind of confidence can one have that other parts have passed those kind of tests?
- jacquesm 5y agoYou can bet that they did test for those conditions. The question is what combination of elements here is causing the problem, which is likely not an easy to answer question. Paint is complex, especially airplane paint.
- ethbr0 5y ago> such relatively straight forward thing as paint Think about high performance paint as a very thin surface that happens to be applied in liquid form.
- kabdib 5y agoGo read Bruce Sterling's 1993 article on something relatively straight forward, like glue: https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/3zode9/bruce_sterling_on_how_superglue_is_hfy/ https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/3zode9/bruce_sterling_... I've done a bit more reading about paint; if anything, it's even more complicated than glue (bigger design space, for one thing: https://www.essentialchemicalindustry.org/materials-and-applications/paints.html https://www.essentialchemicalindustry.org/materials-and-appl... )
- the-dude 5y agoTFA argues that is not a safety issue.
- ghshephard 5y agoI've read this paragraph a couple times - and what I find intriguing is how it's the sort of thing that GPT-3 can write based on the initial news statement. Every sentence in it is somewhat tautological. Maybe I'm just more suspicious, but I can envision a time (uh, maybe it's already here?) when forums like HN start to get peppered with AI commentary... This sentence, though - seems to be without any basis: "Currently development of new products is going faster than we can understand the qualities and limitations of those products." I would think that in 2021 we know far more about the "qualities and limitations" of products under development - through virtue of more sophisticated testing, more sophisticated test equipment, and advanced analytical capability.
- SmellTheGlove 5y agoFunny, I had a similar reaction. The wording is just strange. Like on Reddit when bots are trying to create fud.
- cromka 5y ago> I would think that in 2021 we know far more about the "qualities and limitations" of products under development - through virtue of more sophisticated testing, more sophisticated test equipment, and advanced analytical capability. Not to mention that the current state of knowledge is based also on what we've learned so far about existing good and bad technologies.
- m0llusk 5y agoCarbon fiber airframes are new and have displayed unanticipated failures. Maybe they should have had more testing or more should have gone into reliable inspection and repair. We as a society may come to appreciate demonstrated robustness as much as novelty and efficiency.
- Gravityloss 5y agoWell at least carbon fiber composites are not new, used in Formula 1 probably when most posters here weren't born. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McLaren_MP4/1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McLaren_MP4/1
- JKCalhoun 5y agoHa ha, I was a teenager. Formula 1 though were never looking for 50-year integrity for their cars. While your example establishes the beginning of the use of carbon fiber, it seems otherwise orthogonal to its present use in commercial aircraft.
- Gravityloss 5y ago1981 is hardly the beginning. It was for example used in the Airbus A300, which entered service in 1974. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A300 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A300 Infamous but acquitted from the rudder incident on American Airlines Flight 587 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Fractured-carbon-fibers-showing-crack-growth-directions_fig3_279693318 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Fractured-carbon-fibers-...
- jacquesm 5y ago> Currently development of new products is going faster than we can understand the qualities and limitations of those products. This indicates a very superficial understanding of materials science. No, development of new processes and materials does not go faster than our understanding is progressing, they are progressing in lockstep. The only thing that occasionally happens is that accelerated aging testing and lightning damage testing does not turn up issues soon enough for them not resulting in visible damage during operations. But aircraft are inspected with great regularity and such defects will almost always be noticed in time. To the best of my knowledge this particular defect has not resulted in any planes crashing. There were some more substantial issues with early planes using composites but those were to the best of my knowledge resolved, it is of course entirely possible that as these airframes age that new issues will crop up. The main question around these is usually what was the cause, bad maintenance, bad process during application (for instance: a respray by another entity than the manufacturer) or a manufacturing error, and that in turn leads to the question of who will pay for the damage. It isn't rare for there to be additional factors involved, such as issues like these being used to pressure a manufacturer into absorbing costs or waiving cancellation fees on surplus orders. So before jumping to conclusions about our ability to develop new materials you'd probably have to absorb a lot of information about this particular issue, it is likely a lot more complex than a superficial reading would tell.
- rossdavidh 5y agoI think some of the responses are missing the larger point here. Every new tech has unknowns and potential issues, some of which don't come to light for years. If it takes 20+ years to go from initial small-scale uses to volume production on big projects (e.g. Airbus), then sometime during those years many of the issues will come to light. It's pretty clear that technology is accelerating (and has been for a long time). What is not as clear is that our ability to artificially age products, in order to test how they will stand up over time, has always only been part of the way in which problems were found. Another, perhaps more important, and certainly more authoritative way, is to look at how they actually hold up over time. If technology takes long enough to go from small-scale uses to volume production, that's good enough. At some point, and perhaps we've reached it, the pace of technological change is fast enough that we end up relying almost entirely on testing methods that try to simulate long-term aging in a short amount of time. These methods won't always do the job. Notably, none of these issues are unique to aerospace.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago> none of these issues are unique to aerospace Aerospace has slowed in its pace of innovation relative to other industries in the last decades. Its long design times similarly mitigate this line of broad criticism. The bleeding-edge materials on this plane didn’t fail. Paint over copper mesh did. That paint might have had some novel features, but nothing unknowably new. We don’t even have evidence this was a material interaction versus QC failure.
- 1cvmask 5y agoIt seems that victim blaming is not something specific to just Boeing. Airbus blamed Qatar airways and the hot weather till similar issues emerged with planes of Finn Air and Air France in colder climates. Whatever happened to the customer is always right? Guess it is easier to victim blame when you operate in essence a duopoly. Competition is critical to solve these issues in the long run.
- lostcolony 5y ago>> Whatever happened to the customer is always right? Enough people worked retail to know that's a lie. But yes, this is the sort of thing Airbus should have responded better to, even if it was without any real promise of making things right (i.e., "We are investigating fully as to what has happened here and will seek to make things right if we find this in any way weakens the structural stability of our planes, known the world over as some of the (insert whatever marketing speak)")
- lotsofpulp 5y ago> Whatever happened to the customer is always right? The customer not being right.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Bayart 5y ago>Whatever happened to the customer is always right? That never made it to Europe to begin with.
- S_A_P 5y agoI’m not even close to an aviation expert but I’m curious if we are reaching a point where aerospace tech is too complicated. Both major manufacturers are having issues with their latest generation of planes. I’m curious what someone with expertise thinks about Boeing and Airbus’ issues
- sithadmin 5y agoYou could basically make this statement every year since commercial airliners were introduced. For commercial air transport, the 'bleeding edge' (which I put in quotes because it's actually quite conservative, relative to the bleeding edge in other fields) has always suffered from minor (and sometimes major and deadly) product quirks. Military aircraft even more so. This is also why there's a very strong industry preference for airframes that are 'tried and true' - e.g. 737 variants up until the MAX, A320 and A330, etc.
- Someone 5y agoAnd it’s also unavoidable. To really know how an airplane will age during its lifetime, you have to build it and use it for 50+ years. That would mean all ‘in service’ aircraft would be based on 50+ year old designs. That clearly is undesirable, if only because it would be too expensive. So, instead, one uses models for the effects of aging, for example by repeatedly freezing and heating parts while they also are being stressed physically and are under intense UV lighting. Those models can be wrong, but if you’re using new tech, you can’t afford to wait with selling airplanes until you know they are right. (Of course, this isn’t limited to the aircraft industry; it happens in all engineering. For example, hard disk manufacturers don’t run new hard disk technology for decades to measure its MTBF, either) Sometimes, such models need major adjustment, as happened with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_Comet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_Comet.
- ethbr0 5y agoI guess GP's point could be summarized as "Does the amount of complexity required to improve planes now exceed our ability to manage?" Curious in responses from that perspective. Are airframes that much more complicated? Or just better due to advances in aerodynamic understanding, but not much more complicated? And same question for engines. Are modern high-bypass turbofans more complex?
- timw4mail 5y agoI'm not sure there exists a more complex set of requirements for paint than for aircraft. Extreme cold to surface temperatures, the requirement to flex with adhered surfaces without cracking, plus the desire for a paint job to last for years. It looks like conductivity is also desired, to some degree, to help the metal surfaces dissipate lightning.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago>I'm not sure there exists a more complex set of requirements for paint than for aircraft. Extreme cold to surface temperatures, the requirement to flex with adhered surfaces without cracking, plus the desire for a paint job to last for years. That's basically a walk in the park compared to anything that needs to deal with unearthly temperatures and harsh chemicals at the same time. Furthermore, air (and airborne water) isn't very abrasive which helps a lot even if you do go through it at hundreds of miles per hour. You can more or less think most modern paint as a plastic coating. High speed air with the occasional water droplet or Canadaian goose, easy. Abrasives, hydrocarbons, high temperatures, not so easy.
- kuschku 5y agoWouldn't e.g. landing and starting from an airport near the sea with constant saltwater droplets in the air also damage the paint?
- OldHand2018 5y agoI really liked the old American Airlines scheme where they just didn't paint the airplane. It was beautiful. But in the modern age, if you need a metal mesh around a carbon fiber fuselage then not painting the airplane is probably not an option. Sad.
- nickff 5y ago>" I really liked the old American Airlines scheme where they just didn't paint the airplane." It wasn't quite that simple. I believe the 'bare metal' finish actually had a layer of protective varnish painted on, to protect the metal from oxidation (anyone who has handled bare aluminum can tell you that it develops a layer of oxide very quickly). In addition to that, the panels had to be specially chosen and very carefully handled, as small blemishes were very obvious.
- EMM_386 5y agoWow. People were speculating that this was a ruse by Qatar to get out of contracts with Airbus. After seeing the images, that's no ruse. And that appears to be a bit more than "cosmetic".
- Canotdohng 5y agoFeedback from Qatar is always taken with a grain of salt given the long history of Akbar Al Baker using fallacious pretexts to engage in ruthless contractual fights.
- melony 5y agoAre the wings painted too? Would it result in detachment of the airflow?
- jacquesm 5y agoYes, especially the leading edges undergo a lot of protection because otherwise the structure underneath would suffer from the continuous impact of airborne particles, insects, precipitation and so on. Detachment of airflow across the whole wing would require a lot of damage, normal inspection would result in such a plane to be grounded well ahead of that happening.
- ComputerGuru 5y ago> Airbus says there is no risk to the A350's safety - a point echoed by the other airlines, which have not grounded any jets and describe the issue as "cosmetic." Talk about parties with vested interest in a “nothing to see here, keep moving” conclusion. The only opinion that actually matters here is that of the regulators.
- cjrp 5y agoCertainly looks more than cosmetic in the photos, surely has an effect on the aerodynamics if you're flying around with mesh on show.
- cowgoesmoo 5y agoIt might increase parasitic drag by a tiny amount, which will reduce fuel efficiency, but these planes have so much thrust that the increase in drag is negligible to the actual operations of the aircraft.
- cjrp 5y agoOh absolutely, it says a lot about modern aircraft design that when I say it has an effect I just mean a 1% increase in fuel consumption!
- aurizon 5y agoThat lightning limiting conducting screen is too inherently flexible for the coating they used - it aged and became brittle and cracks appeared as the screen flexed. They are cosmetic AND protective to stop the naked screen from mechanical abrasion and fatigue flexure. They will watch and replace the coating when it gets bad
- throaway46546 5y agohttps://archive.md/YKiA1 https://archive.md/YKiA1
- JackFr 5y agoThe more I learn about them, the more astonishlgy complex and amazing technological marvels modern commercial jetliners are.
- OldHand2018 5y agoHalfway through the article is this extraordinarily helpful information (given that I know nothing at all about aircraft paint): > When Airbus 15 years ago launched the A350, it chose to follow Boeing's new 787 in using carbon-fibre instead of metal. > Experts say the lighter jets consume less fuel but are harder to deck out in a way that makes paint stick. > The new jets also need a layer of metallic mesh to dissipate lightning strikes because carbon-fibre is not conductive. > Finally, unlike metal, carbon does not expand and shrink as temperatures change. Yet paint does, resulting in a tug of war between plane and paint that can cause peeling over time. > Problems reported by Qatar Airways and some - though far from all - other A350 operators suggest this is happening earlier than expected, two people familiar with the design said. > The problem may have been compounded by the paint's especially weak adhesion to titanium rivets, they added. I wonder how dissimilar the paint and/or painting process is to the 787. Perhaps it will one day suffer the same issues.
- kabes 5y agoFrom the article: > Airbus is also not alone in facing problems. Boeing has had paint issues and a phenomenon known as rivet rash, or flecks of missing paint, on its competing 787s.
- missedthecue 5y agoYou'd think we'd have more sophisticated paint in this day and age.
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoPaint isn't a new technology. Paint on that kind of material, though, is new enough to not be well understood yet.
- trhway 5y agolooking at that mesh over carbon skin it is really hard to imagine how any paint can adhere long term there given the flight conditions, temp changes ,vibration, etc. Went out of curiosity to check out how Boeing solves the issue on 787 and voila, Boeing didn't disappoint : https://www.businessinsider.com/boeing-removed-lightning-strike-safety-feature-787-dreamliner-faa-report-2019-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/boeing-removed-lightning-str... "Boeing removed a feature that protects its 787 planes during lightning strikes as a cost-cutting measure, even after FAA experts objected" Mind you, that is 2019, after the 737 MAX crashes, it is like the 787 department just didn't get the memo. Or may be there weren't any memo inside Boeing.
- second--shift 5y agoI recently rode in an Iberia Air Airbus A350. I was struck by how the paint seemed to be dirty / droopy under the windows. This was supposedly a ~10 year old plane (I forget the tail number, so I can't look it up). https://imgur.com/a/TWNWPQs https://imgur.com/a/TWNWPQs
- andor 5y agoThat's an A330. The A350 did not yet exist 10 years ago.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- diskzero 5y agoImagine doing the walk-around inspection as part of the flight crew and seeing that sort of degradation? The flight crews were possible told it wasn't a major issue and to keep on schedule. As a pilot myself, I get very concerned whenever I see any sort of abnormal surface feature. I am lucky in that I can cancel my own flights. Any commercial pilots here willing to share their experience with this sort of thing? In the US, the FAA gives the pilot command over the flight, but I imagine companies take a dim view of pilots canceling flights over certain maintenance issues.
- kazinator 5y agoAircraft paint has to provide a tough, weather-proof surface that can withstand being blasted by dust and hail at 900 km/h. When you call it cosmetics, you're likening that to eye shadow or lipstick. No engineer would care to be named as the source of that idiotic statmeent.
- FlingPoo 5y agoThere is an excellent documentary on the Boeing 787 on Amazon Prime Video. Very detailed on how it is built, what materials, engines, everything. It's called "The Great Boeing 787"
- danielEM 5y agoWhen I read article saying and showing how Airbus is failing badly on its paint and Boeing is only slightly mentioned in it it does look to me like an article to build up certain emotions against Airbus. I'm quite scared of modern journalism and how facts can be used to manipulate and mislead people.