Innovating in Aeronautics with a First in Acoustics
When the A3XX programme – later renamed the Airbus A380 programme – first launched, Airbus was looking for an effective solution to soundproof their jet engines. Delta Neo quickly took up a position as a specialist in acoustic micro-drilling.
The client specifications were extreme. The difficulty was in micro-drilling glass-reinforced epoxy panels with a drilled hole density of around one million holes per m², with a mean diameter tolerance of just +/- 3 microns!
A real technological feat. Such high precision combined with this hole density were essential for the micro-drilled composite panels to help improve the soundproofing of the A380’s engines.
After several months of study and testing in close collaboration with the client, Delta Neo’s team was all systems go. We made changes to our production equipment and adapted the process to successfully achieve the accuracy demanded and answer with a unique technology on this new market.
But that’s not all. Innovation was required on the part of Delta Neo’s team in order to measure such geometrical tolerances.
To do this, the group’s existing no-contact dimensional inspection skills (visual) were needed to create a client-certified inspection protocol.
Everything was in place to guarantee the success of this technology, which remains in use today as part of several aeronautical programmes, making these aircraft among the quietest in the world.
Delta Neo’s capacity for innovation results from a fusion of various factors that are fundamental to the company: a close relationship with the client based on trust, the mastery of cutting-edge industrial expertise across a wide range of fields of application and the limitless ingenuity to blend these areas of expertise and invent new alternative processes that are frequently both inexpensive and highly efficient.