Development of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner

Introduction
In 2003, Boeing launched a project to build a new airframe that had the original designation of 7E7 Dreamliner. In January 2005, the aircraft was redesigned the 787 Dreamliner. Boeing’s intent was to utilize new technology and procurement processes to build two versions of the aircraft. The 787-8 was designed to carry 210 to 250 passengers on routes of 7,650 to 8,200 nautical miles and the stretch version (787-9) was designed to transport 250 to 290 passengers on typically longer routes of 8,000 to 8,500 nautical miles. The advanced technology would allow Boeing to produce aircraft that were more fuel efficient, would produce fewer emissions and had a significantly better cash …show more content…

The benefit of this was to leverage the weight to minimize fuel costs and/or exchange airframe weight reduction for increased payload capacity (passengers or freight).

As can be noted on the fault tree, both branches are a direct result of the use of the composite material. Because the use of this material was unprecedented for the application at hand, the actual engineering characteristics had to be calculated. Characteristics such as dynamic load values, flow (Reynolds) numbers and structural stress matrices were produced from scratch. Like engineering numbers for the aluminum frames no longer applied. The delay caused by accounting for the new material was significant. In addition, many of the calculated results obtained in the engineering phase of the design did not match the results of some of the exercises in the test phase. This forced further delays as engineers re-ran numbers on different flight and load scenarios. These two factors contributed to long delays due to engineering.

Re-engineering due to the use of the composite material also had a causative and additive effect on Boeing’s ability to gain Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Type Certification. This type of certification is the result of the FAA granting permission for a company to produce a particular airframe for commercial release. No plane gets sold without this certification. The effect of the new material was causative in that the FAA was required to provide