Aerospace case studies

Airframe structural design, analysis & certification

Gattaca Projects is currently completing structural analysis and certification reporting for a Swiss aircraft manufacturer on a business jet. We’ve won repeat business over the last four years and continue to successfully support this prestigious programme.

Specific tasks have included analysis and optimisation of the business jet vertical stabiliser, including primary structure, flight controls and various composite fairings, as well as analysis and optimisation of rib stiffeners for the vertical tail plane. Our analysis and recommendations of 10 ribs provided a saving of over 1kg.

We also undertook complete static strength certification analysis to EASA CS 23 specification.

Areas covered include:

  • Horizontal Stabilizer – Elevator including control systems
  • Vertical Stabilizer – Rudder including control systems
  • Vertical Stabilizer – Skins and Stringers
  • Belly Fairing – Forward, Middle and Aft
  • Rear Fuselage – Longerons
  • Rear Fuselage – Engine Pylons
  • Rear Fuselage – Frames

Gattaca Projects have significant experience of reverse engineering to establish the capability of aging aircraft structure, support manufacturing concessions and the recommendations of modifications to suit existing airframe structures.

Business jets – structural analysis and certification

Gattaca Projects has completed structural analysis and certification reporting for a major European manufacturer’s regional passenger jet.

Since our first successful project we’ve been awarded repeat business over the last four years, and continue to support this flagship client.

In all cases we work collaboratively with our clients to agree on our approach to the project. We make sure the CVE (Certification and Validation Engineer) and the customer is informed of the calculation methods proposed prior to completion of all certification reporting and subsequent presentation to customer CVE for approval of aircraft structure.

We have delivered a large number of work packages including the following:

  • Analysis and optimisation of the vertical stabiliser, including primary structure, flight controls and various composite fairings
  • Analysis and optimisation of rib stiffeners for the vertical tail plane. Our analysis and recommendations showed a saving of over 1kg
  • Complete static strength certification analysis in line with European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA CS 23), for:
    • Horizontal Stabilizer – elevator including control systems
    • Vertical Stabilizer – rudder including control systems
    • Vertical Stabilizer – skins and stringers
    • Belly Fairing – forward, middle and aft
    • Rear Fuselage – engine pylons support structure

Designing lightweight aircraft seats

Gattaca Projects reviewed proposed design alterations for an aircraft seat manufacturer to reduce both weight and manufacturing costs on aircraft seats.

Our fixed-price package of work included conceptual design improvements through to detailed design and production of manufacturing drawings, as well as hand calculations, linear and non-linear FEA (Finite Element Analysis).

The package of work was completed in three phases:

Phase one

Our projects team started with a three week investigation to review the existing seat and identify areas of concern and areas for opportunity to save weight. We also looked at the existing structure and suggested alternative production methods that would save time and cost.

Phase two

We set about optimising the seat’s primary structure. We focussed on the metallic structure and suggested opportunities where our customer could introduce lightweight materials and methods.

We identified improvements that would reduce assembly time; the number of components required and the weight, by approximately 1kg. This reduction in weight per seat results in a massive improvement in fuel consumption.

We worked collaboratively with manufacturing suppliers to ready components for static and dynamic testing - tests they subsequently passed successfully.

Phase three

In this final phase we reviewed the Head Injury Criteria (HIC) test and proposed alterations to the overall design through the completion of classical analysis and finite analysis that demonstrated the seat would survive 16G testing carried out at Milbrook.

The outcome was that the components we designed successfully passed the 16G HIC test.