Aurora Flight Sciences - Capabilities

Aurora’s Aerostructures sector offers its customers a full service solution; maintaining the unique ability to rapidly engage its best-in-class engineering and manufacturing talent to rapidly prototype and produce new products. Aerostructures specializes in build-to-print, design, and rapid prototyping of airframes fabricated from advanced composite and metallic materials. Our mission is to provide the best value and total solution for integrated aerostructures assemblies and components.

The Virginia facility, located at the Manassas Regional Airport, hosts our Product Development Center and provides our customers with expert airframe engineering services as part of our Aerostructures design-to-build capability. The engineering team has the tools, skills, knowledge, and experience to design, analyze and validate advanced aerostructures components and assembly systems. We can take a clean sheet product design and carry it through the entire lifecycle of a program including the following activities;

Materials, Processes Research and Development
Structural Design
Structural Analysis
Risk reduction and building block validation development
Full Scale testing and structural validation
Tool design and fabrication
Prototype fabrication
Full rate production

Within our AS9100-certified processes, Aurora uses CAD/CAE software packages such as CATIA® V5, ENOVIA LCA, and Femap/NASTRAN suite. Aurora’s design-build teams work closely with our customers’ engineers to address materials, processes, and producability issues early in the design phase to assure affordable, high-quality aerospace structures for successful production programs.

Manufacturing Capabilities

Aurora Flight Sciences offers expertise in the manufacture of composite and metal aerostructures at two sites: North Central West Virginia Airport in Bridgeport, WV and Golden Triangle Regional Airport in Columbus, MS.

The Aurora Flight Sciences of West Virginia (AWV) manufacturing facilities are comprised of almost 100,000 square feet of shop area designed specifically for the manufacture of precision composite (non-metallic and metallic) and sheet metal components. The Bridgeport facility includes a 42,000 square foot composites facility designed as a showplace for lean aerospace manufacturing. The composites facility includes a 10,000 square foot class 100,000 clean room, autoclaves and extensive non-destructive inspection capabilities including large component ultrasonic C-scan capability.

The Aurora Flight Sciences of Mississippi (AMS) operation fabricates composite aerostructures. AMS manufactures Sikorsky Aircraft's MH-60R Sonobuoy Launcher and provides airframe design, assembly and integration of the high performance Orion Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS), GoldenEye 80, and other Aurora projects. The facility includes climate-controlled material storage and composite fabrication space necessary to produce high-quality airframe assemblies.

In the fall of 2008, Aurora opened a 66,000 square foot addition to the AMS facility giving 88,000 square feet to meet growing demand for high-quality aircraft and aerostructures being fabricated in Mississippi.

Composite aerospace structures fabrication

Primary & secondary structures
Laminate and honeycomb sandwich construction
Secondary bonding
In and out of autoclave processes

Sub and major assembly of structures

Composite and metallic
Metal bond
Wire harness fab & installations

Final assembly and integration of complete air vehicles

Flight controls surfaces and rigging
Systems installation
Integration and flight acceptance

Facilities/Site Infrastructure

Over 200,000 sq. ft. of Manufacturing Infrastructure

Located on 2 airport facilities and close to highway transport
Additional acreage for any required expansion (WV & MS)

Autoclaves

8' X 26' 350 degrees and 105 PSI
6' X 10' 350 degrees and 105 PSI
4' X 8' 390 degrees and 190 PSI

Large oven (8' X 60') with digital data acquisition
NDI Processes

Ultrasonic A-Scan
Through transmission C-Scan
Shearography
Phased array
Conventional eddy current, hardness, and dye pen inspection

Composite Center

Virtek Laser Ply Placement
Gerber Fabric Kit Cutter

Machining cells for light and heavy metals

Five CNC 3 axis machining cells
Three CNC 5 axis machining cells
Water Jet router
Small N/C router
N/C lathe

Wing load testing