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Aviation History
1991
1991 - 3233.PDF
SAAB 2000 DESCRIBED Seat layout gives more legroom in 340 cabin width, seats themselves are more comfortable 2000's typical flight duration of 1.5h "...means more sophisticated service and thicker cushions" than the Saab 340 with its typical flight duration of 30-40min, says Engel. He adds: "We've been as flexible as possible on solutions to catering, offering everything from a simple galley to full in-flight service, with hot meals". Crossair, for example, wanted its passengers to enjoy a "seamless" in-flight service between Swis sair flights and its own. There is, therefore, a top-price option, featuring a galley across the rear of the aircraft to deal with hot food. PASSENGER COMFORT The service door is combined with the emergency door and the Saab 340's forward right-hand door has been dispensed with. This leaves room for 15% more baggage space at the front. Engels "fully agrees" that it is a problem to look after passengers in a narrowbody commuter aircraft. The very low internal noise of the aircraft, however, resulting from the six-bladed, slow-turning propel lers, careful fuselage design and the use of engines relatively further out on the wing, will yield a "quantum change" in passenger comfort compared with the 340, he says. Suter says that Crossair's passengers, on arrival in the Saab 2000, will have their coats hung in a closet near the main door before they move into the aircraft and settle on leather seats; shortly after take-off they will be poured their first glass of cham pagne. Suter claims: "We're going to do our best to make everybody really comfortable", adding: "We all love a.bit of luxury". Sharing in change Saab 2000 construction differs little from that of the Saab 340, although the major components are built by different manufac turers largely on a risk-sharing basis. The fuselage is a conventional aluminium structure, built in three main sections, and making extensive use of bonding in dou- blers, window frames and longitudinal stiff- eners. Doors are built from aluminium- honeycomb sandwich, and the cabin floor of carbonfibre sandwich. Saab builds the front two sections, and Westland Aerospace the rear section. Metal-to-metal bonding is a Saab special ity, which the company says "...takes us at least halfway towards the possible weight saving with composites". The cost of setting up tooling and manufacturing for large- scale composite components, it adds, "...did not justify any greater use of composites on the 2000 than on the 340". The aluminium two-spar wing is built in two parts and joined with a manufacturing splice at the aircraft centreline. Stringers and doublers are bonded to the skin. The single-slotted trailing-edge flaps are covered with carbonfibre reinforced-plastic (CFRP) sandwich panels and the ailerons have leading edges of the same material. The wing geometry and basic structure were produced by Saab, but CASA is responsible for its design, stressing, testing and manufacture and for installation of the AP Precision main landing gear. Horizontal- and vertical-stabiliser con struction is of aluminium-honeycomb sand wich, with the use of composites restricted to CFRP-sandwich skins and glassfibre- reinforced plastic leading edges on the rudders and elevators. Production of the empennage will be done in a new produc tion plant by Finland's Valmet, with metal bonding being subcontracted to ADCO, a Valmet subsidiary. The entire Saab 2000 design is contained on a Dassault CATIA three-dimensional computer-aided design system. "We took a very early, brave, decision, to go for CATIA with the 2000," says Hellstrand. Saab had already started using CATIA with the 340, and increased its use in the JAS programme. The Saab 2000 marks a major change for the company in terms of the number of workstations (230), each of which is capable of accessing the entire 2000 design. The idea was not so much to reduce development time, which is about normal at 45 months (including flight testing), but to integrate the design and manufacturing processes. "It means that all of the design changes can be fed into the computers, and then, if necessary, straight into manufac ture," says Hellstrand. The system is partic ularly useful for designing sheet-metal components and for routeing hydraulic pipes and electrical harnesses. "Before, we needed a full-scale mockup to do that." Major vendors • AIM Aviation - Cabin interior furnishing and exterior painting Sundstrand Auxiliary power unit Fischer Advanced Composite Components Dorsal fin Dowty-Rotol Propeller valmet Fin and tailplane Rockwell-Collins Avionics AP Precision Products Undercarriage FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 11 - 17 December, 1991 SAAB 2000 DESCRIBED 7
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