Yes I know, but for me it would make sense that if the FAA is going to get tougher on BOEING, they will also be tougher with AIRBUS. Apparently EADS' CEO thinks so too: Tougher certification after Boeing 787 woes: EADS - Economic Times
Dreamliner crisis: JAL 787 was at risk of 2nd battery fire. Dreamliner crisis: JAL 787 was at risk of 2nd battery fire | Plane Talking Ouch!
I hear you. Except AFAIK we haven't seen an Airbus spontaneously combust....... *Maybe* they got the design of their battery/charging/monitoring/shutdown circuits right? And/or didn't use Radio Shack parts?! Cheers, Ian
They haven't flown the A350 yet so the jury is still out. Sometimes it's an advantage NOT to be first.
The FAA has cleared Boeing to test fly a new battery design for the 787. (Photo: Boeing) March 12, 2013, 5:38 PM After a thorough review, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration on Tuesday approved Boeings certification plan for a redesigned battery system for the 787 Dreamliner. The certification plan marks the start of a process to evaluate the 787s return to flight and requires Boeing to conduct what the FAA called extensive testing and analysis to demonstrate compliance with applicable safety regulations and special conditions. This comprehensive series of tests will show us whether the proposed battery improvements will work as designed, said U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. We wont allow the plane to return to service unless were satisfied that the new design ensures the safety of the aircraft and its passengers. The improvements include a redesign of the internal components to limit the possibility of a short circuit within the battery, better insulation of the cells and the addition of a new containment and venting system. We are confident the plan we approved today includes all the right elements to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of the battery system redesign, said FAA Administrator Michael Huerta. Todays announcement starts a testing process which will demonstrate whether the proposed fix will work as designed. The certification plan establishes specific pass/fail criteria for the series of tests needed to return the airplane to service. It also defines the parameters the tests should measure, prescribes the test methodology and specifies their format and design, said the FAA. Agency engineers will witness the testing and participate in all aspects of the process, it added. The FAA has approved limited test flights for two aircraft outfitted with prototype versions of the new containment system. If successful, the flight tests would validate the aircraft instrumentation for the battery and testing of the battery enclosure as well as product improvements for other systems. Neither the FAA nor the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board have determined the source of the January 7 fire aboard a Japan Air Lines 787 parked at Boston Logan Airport. Another case of battery overheating aboard an All Nippon Airways 787 flying over Japan on January 16 remains under investigation by Japanese authorities as well. All 50 of the 787s delivered to customers have sat grounded since then. Meanwhile, the FAAs comprehensive review of the 787s design, production and manufacturing process continues. © AviationOnline GREGORY POLEK
It's a start in the right direction. Still nothing mentioned about the charging and regulating system I am looking forward to cause and resolution.
If you don't know what caused a failure, and are unable to duplicate it, how can you design a compreshensive test program to validate a fix? The big question is whether the two incidences will just be labeled as anomalies, as in two 10^-6 occurances occuring within days of each other.
I have a feeling that maybe some good sense is going to surface after they get the airplanes going again and they will trace the failure up stream from the batteries. I have a hunch that the charging and discharge control equipment is to blame since they have had circuit boards failing in those systems. I'm not an electrical engineer but something has to have fed those batteries an overcharge or allowed a rampant discharge. I'm open to get shot down so experts, fire away. This whole thing hurts for my friends still working there and I hope that the boys upstairs have been jolted into consciousness.
Appears as though there was some structural damage (composite floor beams and fuselage shell skin/stringer). ouch
Well, I won't shoot at you, and your scenario is indeed plausible. The charging circuitry for a Li+ type battery has specific rates, and voltage margins that are different than the circuitry for other types of batteries. It could very well be in the design and/or function of the charging circuit. Or, there is another failure mode which is similar to a nuclear meltdown. Notwithstanding the charging circuit, and no matter what it does, if the internal plates of a Li+ battery touch, it sets off a rapid rise in current flow in that cell, and concomitant rapid rise in temp. If the temp in the cell reaches the boiling point of the electrolyte, it will begin to boil off, and expand rapidly, potentially breaching the cell containment. Now, since the electrolyte of a Li+ battery is organic, it's Katie bar the door for what happens next. Also, the added stress to the cell case can cause damage to adjacent cells, which may break the plates in those cells, and viola! thermal runaway, just like a reactor when the control rods have been pulled, and the water dries up. This type of failure mode was captured recently by the Tesla motor company which has a similar battery arrangement, and it went off while sitting in a parking lot, minding it's own business. No one knows what happened within the cells of that failure either, but it wasn't due to the charging circuit at all. The energy density of Li+ type batteries is very high compared to it's weight and cubic area. Along with that increased energy density comes new problems. This might be a good time to mention that the boiling point of the electrolyte goes down, as altitude goes up(lower pressure), which would make the boiling electrolyte theory even more likely given that they surely didn't test the plate failure modality in reduced atmospheric pressure on the ground in a test chamber. Physics can be a real *****... A good time to remind folks that I'm not a battery expert.
FAA Approves Boeing Plan to Fix 787's Batteries By JOAN LOWY The Associated Press A Boeing plan to redesign the 787 Dreamliner's fire-plagued lithium-ion batteries won approval Tuesday from the Federal Aviation Administration, moving the cutting-edge planes a step closer to flying passengers again. The plan includes changes to the internal battery components to minimize the possibility of short-circuiting, which can lead to overheating and cause a fire. Among the changes are better insulation of the battery's eight cells and the addition of a new containment and venting system, the FAA said in a statement. The FAA statement didn't provide an estimate for when the grounded planes might return to service. Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Wash., who was briefed by the agency, said that if all goes well, the FAA could give final approval by mid- to late April for the 787 to resume flight. Boeing would still have to retrofit the 50 planes already delivered to eight airlines in seven countries, Larsen said in an interview. That could mean the plane wouldn't return to the skies until late April or early May, he said. First, Boeing's redesigned batteries have to pass a series of 20 separate lab tests, Larsen said, then flight tests would follow. "If there's any one test that isn't passed, it's back to the drawing board for that particular part of the tests," he said. So far, test flights of two 787s have been approved — one with a complete prototype of the new battery, the other with only a new, more robust containment box for the battery, Boeing spokesman Marc Birtel said. The plan is an outline for a recertification of the plane's batteries, the FAA said. The 787 has two identical lithium-ion batteries, one of which is located toward the front of the plane and powers cockpit electrical systems, the other toward the rear and used to start an auxiliary power unit while the plane is on the ground, among other functions. Every item that is part of an airplane, down to its nuts and bolts, must be certified as safe before FAA approves that type of plane as safe for flight. The 787 fleet worldwide has been grounded by the FAA and civil aviation authorities in other countries since Jan. 16, following a battery fire on a Dreamliner parked in Boston and a smoking battery that led to the emergency landing of another 787 in Japan. "This comprehensive series of tests will show us whether the proposed battery improvements will work as designed," Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said in a statement. "We won't allow the plane to return to service unless we're satisfied that the new design ensures the safety of the aircraft and its passengers." All Nippon Airways, the largest customer for the plane so far, said in a statement from Japan that it saw the FAA decision as significant progress. "Putting safety as the first priority, we hope to get the planes back in the air as soon as possible," the airline said. The airliner's troubles have raised concerns that the FAA has ceded too much responsibility for evaluating the safety of new aircraft to manufacturers. To save manpower, the FAA designates employees at aircraft makers and their subcontractors to conduct the safety testing of new planes. Boeing's battery testing concluded that short-circuiting wouldn't lead to a fire and that the chance of a smoke event was one in every 10 million flight hours. Instead, there were two battery failures when the entire fleet had clocked less than 52,000 flight hours. The FAA's approval of Boeing's plan "is a critical and welcome milestone toward getting the fleet flying again and continuing to deliver on the promise of the 787," Jim McNerney, the aircraft maker's CEO, said in a statement. The 787 is Boeing's newest and most technologically advanced plane. Its grounding on Jan. 16, an enormous black eye for Boeing, marked the first time since 1979 that FAA had ordered every plane of a particular type to stay out of the air for safety reasons. UBS analyst David Strauss estimated that the 787 will cost Boeing $6 billion this year. Besides the battery problems, the plane already costs more to build than it brings in from customers. United Airlines is the only U.S. carrier with Dreamliners in its fleet. It has six, plus another 44 on order. American and Delta have also ordered 787s. Boeing has orders for more than 800 of the planes from airlines around the globe. Steven Udvar-Hazy, CEO of Air Lease Corp., which has ordered 12 of the planes, said it could still take months for the plane to fly again and that a very long-term grounding could damage the 787 Dreamliner brand. "It's important to get the airplane back in the air," Udvar-Hazy said while attending an airplane finance conference in Orlando, Fla. "Every plane has mechanical issues, but this was one that was considered serious by the authorities and I think Boeing has done everything it can to get that under control." Udvar-Hazy has had weekly updates from Boeing's CEO of commercial airplanes, Ray Conner, and daily conversations with others at the airplane manufacturer. He has then relayed that information to his airline customers around the world. "Boeing has been very transparent and I think they've made a very concerted effort to address this issue ... to come up with a fix that hopefully is a permanent fix, not just sort of a Band-Aid solution," he said. Boeing plans to begin test flights within days, Birtel said. The new battery design will be tested on a plane that has been identified elsewhere as being built for LOT Polish Airlines. Boeing also plans to fly a 787 that is used exclusively for testing. That plane has the stronger battery box, and will also be used for unrelated engine tests. Before the fire on Jan. 7, Boeing shares had closed at $77.69. They closed as low as $73.65 three weeks later, after the planes had been grounded. But the shares have been recovering as anticipation grew for a battery fix. Boeing's gains have outpaced the strong rise in the Dow Jones industrial average, of which Boeing Co. is a member. On Tuesday, Boeing shares rose $1.22 to close at $84.16, and rose another 28 cents to $84.44 in aftermarket trading. ——— Freed reported from Minneapolis. Associated Press writers Scott Mayerowitz in Orlando, Fla., and Elaine Kurtenbach in Tokyo contributed to this report.
If memory serves me well, they "seriously" dumped the price of the first 200s 787 sold for about $80MM (plus engines) in order to "kill" the A330NG, thus forcing EADS/AIRBUS to go for a more advanced A350. Here is what David Strauss wrote recently: Read more: Is the Dreamliner Becoming a Financial Nightmare for Boeing? | TIME.com
I think this all but ensures that no aircraft manufacturer will call their aircraft a 'name' in the future that could be the butt of all jokes. First it was late. Then really late. Then super late. And now it catches fire. Fireliner anyone?
This isn't the first time an aircraft manufacturer has spent more per airplane to build than what they are selling them for to gain market share in lieu of profit, Airbus included. Just saying...
Airbus invented this strategy years ago. We were told that the initial A380's sold for a little more than a contemporary production line 747. AB wedged their way into the industry by drastically undercutting the prices. They made no bones about it.
Honestly, I think the "undercutting" strategy has been around a lot longer than that, and not just in the aircraft industry.
Do you have a link? I wasn't aware that Tesla has had any fires since the very earliest roadster production. Fisker, on the other hand, has had a bunch of fires. Is there some reason Boeing couldn't have retrofit NiCads or lead-acid batteries to the 787? I'm sure they are heavier and inferior in every way, except they don't blow up (as often)...
Yeah, it's been around for a while in a lot of industries, but I think he meant Airbus started it in the aircraft industry...maybe I interpreted it incorrectly.
