Pedro Muñoz Esquer, attached to the management of Airbus Spain, participates in the sixth Conference Heraclio Alfaro

The new industrial partners of Airbus must be companies tractors that lead bids and that contract directly with other SMEs and thus reduce the number of partners in programmes.

(from left to right.) Pedro Munoz Esquer, attached to direction of Airbus Espana; Rafael Pax, President of North branch of COIAE; Luis Carlos Egea, Secretary general of COIAE and Juan Pedro Vela, Vice-President branch North COIAE and general director of the center of technologies Aeronauticas-CTA

Airbus is looking for a new profile of suppliers, according to said Pedro Muñoz Esquer, Deputy to the Airbus Spain address in the course of the "sixth Conference Heraclio Alfaro", organized by the school of engineers of Spain in Vitoria. Pedro Muñoz declared that the Consortium is interested in relate only to firms tractors that lead bids and will be able to add value to the product and encouraged the manufacturers of components of the sector to establish partnerships to gain competitiveness. The new Airbus supplier profile would correspond to a number of industrial partners who, in turn, are which hire directly with other SMEs in order to significantly reduce the number of partners in programmes. "Countries like Morocco and China need to attract investment and are going to make much cheaper than us." "What we need for the next ten years are companies that provide added value and the rest of companies are subsidiaries of these", pointed out.

The new rules of the aviation game will require groups with enough entity to assist in engineering calculation, design and manufacturing, able to provide complete sets and who have authority to share financial risk, an option that would correspond to large industrial corporations or alliances of providers. "Is trafficking of that technology has not only the House mother, but be distributed among all", said Muñoz.

In the sixth Conference Heraclio Alfaro, Pedro Munoz pointed out some of the radical changes that will experience the sector in the coming years. The title of "The contribution of the composite materials for aircraft of the 21st century", the Rapporteur stressed the important role of the Spanish industry with regard to these materials whose employment improves the resistance and the weight of the aircraftthe flexibility of the design, dimensional stability, resistance to corrosion and reducing the number of elements used in its manufacture. After reviewing developments and the use of carbon fibre in the past years, the management of Airbus Spain attributed the specialization in the sector Spanish in such materials, to the previous work done by the Spanish industry in the field of structures glued to Fokker, as well as to the contribution of specific machinery of numerical control from the navarra MTorres, one of three unique manufacturers in the world dedicated to the production of equipment for the treatment of these materials.

According to Pedro Muñoz said at his hearing, in the last decade has increased progressively the application of carbon fiber on Airbus aircraft. Currently between 12 and 13 per cent of aircraft carried out in composites, but the trend is that by the year 2010, at least 35 per cent will be held in such materials and the new A350 XWB modelrecently adopted, will reach up to 40 percent. In this regard, he stressed that section 19 of the A350 will feature composite one-piece fuselage.

To solve the challenges that presented materials in carbon fiber must, however, previously solved many challenges, including the noted new cure systems "that we must find both we and our suppliers" and find new textile products, so manufacturers deal with making preform them that later we can inject. "Leadership in aeronautics from the future is in the engineering and composite material", he concluded

The meeting of the Conference Heraclio Alfaro brought together more than 100 people in this sixth call, consolidated as the annual meeting of professionals in the sector. On this occasion, the official school of engineers of Spain - North delegation wanted to open participation in the event the rest of those interested in the world of aeronautics. Among those attending were found Luis Carlos Egea and Angel Villa, Secretary general and vocal, respectively, of the Board of Directors of COIAE, as well as Rafael Pax and Juan Pedro Vela, President and Vice-President, respctivamente, the North delegation of COIAE and representatives of the Association cluster HEGAN and companies such as Aernnova AerospaceAerosfin - CTA, Fibertecnic, Metraltec, Burdinberri, URSSA or Ergis Nautec, among others ITP, Sener