The Airbus A380 landed in the U.S. for the first time this week when two of the jumbo jets touched down in New York and Los Angeles on Monday. Both New York’s Kennedy Airport and LA International are spending $300 million to widen runways and provide special docking equipment for the plane, which has a wingspan almost the length of a football field, according to a story on CNN.com. The double-decker plan has 555 passenger seats.
The largest commercial airplane had planned its initial test flight for last April. Design News Senior Editor Joseph Ogando last year covered how Airbus engineers decided which materials to use in building the world's largest commercial airliner.
Airbus originally planned to produce 25 A380s last year, but with teams of engineers in France and Germany working separately on the electrical design and not communicating the changes to each other on a timely basis, those production numbers were reduced to at the most nine A380s in 2006. See Design News Contributing Editor Doug Smock’s story on “Lessons Learned from the Airbus Design Team.”
For a look at the design programs used in development of the jumbo boeing, check out CAD/CAM Corner.
Almost every automaker has had to 'pick a side' when it comes to alternative fuel options and ways to divest from a reliance on gasoline. Fiat is looking to back compressed natural gas or liquid propane as an interim solution.
Plastic may not be the most beloved of materials to the more environmentally minded, but Plasti 2012 aimed to mold a different opinion of the material in people's minds.
The rare earth element market has become steadily more rational, and new sources coming online will continue to reduce costs. Still, it is unlikely that prices will drop to their former lows.
Against a backdrop of mounting product complexity and a need to keep a lid on development costs, companies are recognizing a need to make simulation a more integral part of the design process. In response, vendors in the CAD world are building out CAE functionality as part of their CAD suites while simulation vendors are building tighter integrations to leading CAD tools. Keith Meintjes, Ph.D., Practice Manager, Simulation and Analysis at CIMdata, Inc., joins Design News CAD Editor Beth Stackpole in this radio program to explore the new face of integrated CAD and CAE, how companies are benefitting from this tighter partnership between platforms, and how integrating CAE earlier in the development cycle pays off in optimized product designs.
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