Chengdu Aircraft Industry Group, a subsidiary of China Aviation Industry Corp. (Beijing), is one of dozens of suppliers working with Boeing Co. (Chicago) on its new 787 Dreamliner airliner.

Founded in the early 1990s, the company specializes in composite and sheet metal manufacturing, numerically controlled machining, tooling design and build, and structure assembly and integration. To date the company has fabricated and assembled components for some 2,000 aircraft.

In the case of the 787, the company is in charge of manufacturing a number of composite wing components, including the airplane’s rudder. Chengdu Aircraft also fabricates automatic over-wing exit doors for the Boeing 737 single-aisle jet.

To keep pace with development times stipulated by Boeing for the 787, the company began using simulation software from digital design and prototyping specialist ESI Group (Rungis, France). This software allows Chengdu Aircraft to simulate the entire process of composite parts design and manufacturing from beginning to end. Fast rendering times accelerate the time-to-manufacture of composite parts and ensures they’re built right the first time.

“ESI Group’s virtual simulation solution for composite parts manufacturing engineering is really revolutionary,” says Yougi Wen, chief manufacturing engineer at Chengdu Aircraft. “It changes the entire process of composite design and manufacturing at Chengdu Aircraft. The software takes the design requirement of aircraft performance into consideration and enables us to know well in advance-as early as in the preliminary design phase-what defects might occur in the composite parts due to the different methods or processes in manufacturing.”

For more on digital production simulation, visit www.esi-group.com.