South African aircraft major component manufacturing company Denel Saab Aerostructures (DSA) has explained to Engineering News Online what the R192-million it is receiving from National Treasury during this financial year is being used for.

“We’re spending it on development work for the Airbus A400M contract. All aerostructures programmes have a high, nonrecurring, expenditure phase, involving the design of the components, the design and manufacture of the jigs on which the components are made, the safety testing of the components –  lightning strike tests, bird strike tests, and stress tests,” elucidated DSA CEO Lana Kinley.

Chapter 4 of South Africa’s Medium Term Budget Statement, released on Tuesday, erroneously stated that R192-million had been assigned to DSA to cover an Airbus claim against the local company for its “failure to meet performance targets as part of the 2004 acquisition of eight A400M aircraft”.

This error was quickly corrected by both Airbus, which assured that “definitely no penalties were being invoked against DSA” and by DSA and the Department of Public Enterprises (DPE) in a joint statement, which pointed out that “DSA has met its targets in terms of its contracts” for the A400M, adding that the South African company had received the money as funding during the current financial year.

“This design and development phase will continue until the final acceptance of the aircraft,” Kinley stated. “The flight test programme of the prototypes could result in modifications to the design of components.”

Modifying the design of a component would require that the entire development process be repeated, because any and all design changes must be subjected to the same stringent   test programme as the original design. In addition, there could also be changes in the design of the manufacturing jigs and tooling.

DSA has already contributed to addressing one of the problems faced by the A400M programme – weight. “We’ve succeeded in getting the weight of our components down,” she reported. “Our first design was too heavy, but now we’ve gotten the weight down to Airbus’ target. The weight component was reduced by reducing the number of component parts by increasing the complexity of machining to manufacture larger components – which then reduced the number of rivets.  The greater saving was in changing material to composites from aluminium which is lighter.”

DSA is responsible for the top shells for the centre fuselage section – these can be thought of as being equivalent to roof panels. The company is producing two top shells for each aircraft – one each in front and behind of the wing box, which joins the wing to the fuselage. In addition, it is making very large wing/fuselage fairings, manufactured mainly from composite materials but including aluminium parts. Each such fairing is 15 m long, 7 m wide, and nearly 3 m high. Denel is also contributing the ribs and spars for the tail fin, and centre wing box structural components.

A consequence of this programme, highlighted by DSA and the DPE in their statement, is that the “design of the A400M structure has raised South Africa’s engineering skills base,” and that “DSA has also developed a composite facility to global standards.”

“We are busy manufacturing components for MSN006 at the moment,” said Kinley. This is the sixth A400M (MSN stands for Manufacturer Serial Number). “But, as previously announced by Airbus, there is a year’s delay on MSN007. This means we face a big hole in our revenue, until such time as we can fill it up with production orders. We are certainly looking for alternative work, but the global recession doesn’t help.”