Testing toward perfection

In a competitive global market, commercial aircraft need to be lighter, faster to market, cheaper to build, easier to maintain, and safer than ever.

Technical requirements and the necessary regulatory criteria for a new aircraft airframe cover a far-ranging spectrum. Adding business constraints and the competitive pressures of the global marketplace make design testing a very interesting process, to say the least.

To make sure that all bases are covered during the release of the last design file, Dallas, TX,-based Vought Aircraft Industries uses an approach that plays the results of sophisticated design and analysis software tools used in the design community against different levels of actual physical testing to make sure that the final product does exactly what it is intended to do.