Affordable Design and Manufacturing of the V-280 Wing

The development of Bell's third-generation tiltrotor, the V-280, places great focus on achieving low cost and robust design simplicity and is demonstrated on the Joint Multi-Role (JMR) Air Vehicle Concept Demonstrator (AVCD). The design and manufacture of the V-280 AVCD wing structure is an example that achieves significant recurring and development cost savings through the infusion of Design for Manufacturing (DFM) principles, advanced materials, robust manufacturing processes, and low-cost developmental tooling. To drive simplicity through all aspects of the design, the V-280 AVCD wing employs a straight, constant section profile with no forward sweep or upward dihedral. Wing skins, spars, and ribs utilize a broad goods layup technique that favors large fabric ply shapes over highly tailored tape plies. This approach has yielded significant reduction in fabrication labor hours (via increased composite material application rates) and has resulted in reduced scrap material. Mechanical assembly hours are also reduced through use of room-temperature paste bonded structure as well as large scale use of determinant assembly methods. Multiple risk reduction test articles, produced concurrently with the design effort, helped to inform and validate the producibility and structural integrity of the final design configuration. New production methods applied to the V-280 demonstrator wing have yielded a projected 57% reduction in total labor hours and a 50% reduction in development tool costs. At the same time, a minimal capital investment profile is supporting the potential production rates necessary for a Future Vertical Lift (FVL) program of record.