The aircraft structure can be defined as the combination of different individual parts to form a whole, be it the fuselage, the wings or the vertical tail. It may be many thousands of individual parts amounting to several square meters - such as the covering on an aircraft fuselage - or a small bracket measuring a few millimeters.

As you would expect from the large number of parts, different materials are used. The standard material of aluminum is increasingly being joined by parts made of carbon fiber or, more recently, GLARE - a combination of aluminum and glass fibers.

Our design teams are familiar with these different materials and have been involved in the design processes for various Airbus programs for many years. One example is the design of vertical tails:

• with the CAD tool CCD for the A330-200 and A340-500/600
• with CATIA V4 for the A380-800
• with CATIA V5 for the A400M

One particular challenge is to integrate the material-specific properties of CFRP in the design process. In addition to our involvement in Airbus programs we also make our design skills and resources for aircraft structures available in projects for other renowned clients in the industry.