Oil Spills to Air Crashes

An interesting article in the Chicago Tribune about the testing of Boeing 787 brings back memories of tough issues.

Boeing developed the 787 to deliver fuel savings of 20% to 30% to airlines- it still runs on conventional high grade kerosene. Boeing wants to push continued consumption of conventional fossil fuels over the next decade or so. If Boeing wanted to bet on alternative energy sources it would have focused resources on different models.

Assuming that air travel in the near future will be based on fossil fuels, the Dreamliner certainly delivers improved fuel efficiencies. On the margin, this will certainly reduce the incremental demand on gasoline (compared to the scenario of using existing airplanes). This could reduce the number and scale of oil drilling disasters and save lives.

However, to get the fuel savings the 787 is based on composites, not metal. The behavior of the composites and the resin when subjected to temperature and weather variations over many cycles, is still hard to model. The critical issue is, how much testing and what types of testing should the 787 undergo before carrying passengers? Even after the testing, how should the 787 be released to customers and deployed? In telecommunications, the complex switching systems undergo a "controlled introduction" phase where only a few systems are deployed and observed carefully over time, before they are approved for general availability and use. Should Boeing release a few planes, wait for a certain period of time or number of flights before deploying more? If a 787 crashes or results in fatalities that are attributable to the composites, then how are the trade-offs evaluated?

Putting the 787 into general aviation use is one of the critical phases in aviation development. The test groups should stand their ground, and one hopes that the FAA is more competent that the MMS in approving change requests.

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787 Dreamliner: What happens when a Boeing 787 Dreamliner crashes? - chicagotribune.com: "When a Boeing 777 lost power and crashed short of the runway at London Heathrow Airport in 2008, the landing gear collapsed, and a strut pierced the passenger floor. Yet apart from one broken leg, there were no serious injuries.

When an Airbus A340 landing in bad weather skidded off a Toronto runway in 2005, it broke into pieces and caught fire. But in the minutes before flames engulfed the jet, all 309 people on board evacuated safely.

Though such accidents don't always end so well — in May, 158 people died when a Boeing 737 slid off a runway in India — today's metal airliners are designed to be survivable in a crash landing.

How will Boeing's new 787 Dreamliner, the first airliner with a body built largely from carbon fiber infused with epoxy resin, fare in such a crash?

The new material is tough. But hit hard enough, it breaks rather than bends. And in a fire, the epoxy resin burns.

One early Boeing computer simulation was disturbing.

In 2005, as design of the Dreamliner advanced, a Boeing analysis showed a crash that is survivable in a largely metal 777 would be deadly in a 787: The impact would shatter the bottom of the 787 fuselage and deliver a jolt severe enough to kill all the passengers.

A Boeing engineering manager called the outcome a "potential showstopper" for the Dreamliner.

Chicago-based Boeing says a key design change and subsequent physical tests prove the final Dreamliner design is now as safe as a metal airplane.

And while a few critics remain concerned, the Federal Aviation Administration is close to certifying the jet as safe to fly passengers.

When an auto company develops a new car, it must run more than a dozen full-scale crash scenarios, witnessed by safety officials. Every test destroys a car.

But running full-scale tests of big jets crashing is considered impractical, as well as too expensive. As a plane heads toward a crash on land or water, there are too many possible impact variations to test every scenario.

So today's metal airplanes have been certified largely using computer simulations. Manufacturers validate their virtual results with smaller-scale physical tests: flexing the wings and stressing fuselage panels to their breaking point.

The FAA and Boeing agreed in advance on exactly what testing was needed to prove the 787's safety.

The 2005 Boeing document that laid out the deadly Dreamliner crash scenario was an early mathematical analysis, prepared by structural-dynamics experts in the company's Phantom Works research unit.

A computer-generated drawing from the internal report shows that in a simulated crash, the 777's metal lower fuselage crumples. But the rest of the airframe, including the floor of the passenger cabin, is intact.

In the composite-plastic 787, by contrast, the lower fuselage is shattered, with multiple holes. And the passenger floor has broken away from the fuselage and collapsed, leaving passengers with little chance of reaching an exit.

In addition, the Boeing study projected that the impact on passengers would be much more severe in a 787.

The highest survivable impact in a crash landing is considered to be about 20g, meaning a nearly instantaneous deceleration equal to 20 times the acceleration caused by gravity.

The study projected that at a vertical descent rate of about 15 miles per hour, the average peak impact on a passenger's spine would be 15g in the 777.

In the 787, though, that impact would be 25g, the study concluded.

In March 2005, Phantom Works project manager Vince Weldon sent an e-mail to Boeing's chief technology officer, Jim Jamieson, flagging the simulation as "very dire."

An aeronautical engineer, Weldon worked for 46 years in aerospace, half of those at Boeing. At Phantom Works, he assessed the use of advanced composites for future airplanes, though he had no direct role on the 787 program.

Weldon's concerns were examined by a panel of Boeing technical experts chosen from outside the 787 program. Its review endorsed the jet's composite-material design.

"He raised questions. They were investigated," said Boeing spokeswoman Lori Gunter. "We did not proceed with the design until we were sure it was safe."

In 2006, Boeing fired Weldon after an allegation that he used a racist remark about a superior in the course of pushing his concerns internally. Weldon, 72, denies that and says the accusation was a way to discredit and get rid of him.

Boeing made structural changes after the 2005 analysis that dramatically improved the jet's crash safety, said Mark Jenks, a vice president on the 787 program.

It redesigned rows of short wedge-shaped support posts beneath the cargo floor so they progressively collapse on impact, absorbing energy and reducing the impact felt in the passenger cabin.

Paolo Feraboli, an assistant professor at the University of Washington and director of its Lamborghini Lab for studying advanced composite structures, who worked for Boeing on the 787 program, said the support posts "fail in a very progressive, very stable, very energy-absorbing fashion."

With the change, Boeing's computer model now projected a much better impact result.

But unlike homogeneous metals, multilayered composites are very difficult to simulate accurately on a computer, Feraboli said.

"We don't currently have the knowledge and the computational power to do a prediction based on purely mathematical models," he said.

So to convince the FAA that its computer model matches real-world results, Boeing performed some physical tests not required on previous metal planes.

In 2007, Boeing performed a key "vertical drop test" of a partial fuselage.

An 8-foot-long section of the fuselage's bottom half, with full luggage containers beneath the passenger floor, was dropped from 15 feet onto a thick steel plate. It hit at an impact speed of around 20 miles per hour.

That's about 10 times the typical vertical descent rate when a big jet lands, and three times the rate its landing gear is required to withstand.

Videos of the test show the fuselage section slamming into the ground and completely flattening along the bottom, evidently fractured and broken, since the plastic doesn't bend. Beneath the passenger floor, small bits of the fuselage support structure fly off.

But in contrast to the 2005 computer model, everything above the cargo floor appears solid. The crucial passenger cabin floor and its supports remain intact.

And Boeing said sensors at the passenger seat showed the impact forces were survivable.

"The integrity of the floor area and overall extent of the damage were all within the bounds we expected and required," Jenks said.

He wouldn't disclose the impact forces recorded at the passenger seats. But he said the results validate the 787 design.

"This structure is as good as the 777," Jenks said. "That's what the model is showing when we finalized the design and then ran this test."

The drop-test outcome raises an additional issue: performance in a post-crash fire.

While the aluminum of a metal plane crumples on impact, composites tend to fracture or shatter. In a crash like that of the A340 in Toronto, would the 787 fuselage keep fire, smoke and toxic fumes from penetrating to the interior and overcoming passengers?

The good news is fire tests conducted by the FAA in 2007 show that plastic composites like those used in the 787 stand up to fire much better than metal.

But that may be irrelevant if fire and fumes can enter through holes in a shattered hull.

A fuel-fed fire can melt through an aluminum panel in about a minute. With an added layer of thermal insulation inside the fuselage wall, the fire barrier holds up a further four minutes. That required five-minute total provides passengers time to get out.

But the type of composite plastic on the Dreamliner will resist burn-through and provide protection from the fire for longer than five minutes, even without insulation.

While the epoxy resin in the composite material ignites and burns, the mat of carbon-fiber layers chars like wood to create a protective barrier that holds back the fire.

Ali Bahrami, head of the FAA's Seattle office dealing with commercial-airplane certification, said the agency's tests showed the carbon-fiber composite not only resisted burn-through impressively but also prevented toxic gases from penetrating inside.

"Composite structure is performing better than metal and insulation together," Bahrami said, adding that "with composites, you provide a longer time to get out."

Boeing ran a series of lab tests, applying an external fire to a panel of the 787's composite material, with similar results.

"Because there are things that are new about this, we've gone way, way beyond what might have been basic requirements," Jenks said. "I'm personally extremely confident and comfortable."

Composite-materials expert Derek Yates is not convinced.

In an unpublished paper, Yates dismissed the FAA fire tests because they were done on an intact fuselage, which is not typical in a real crash.

Yates, 74 and retired, worked for Lockheed on the Trident missile, which had the first primary aerospace structure made from composite plastic. From 1997 to 2000, he consulted for Boeing.

Yates' views on the composites' fire threat stem from work he did in the 1970s with NASA that resulted in FAA rules effectively banning the use of epoxy-based composites from aircraft interiors because of the fire hazard.

All airliners entering service since 1990 comply with that ban.

Yates is concerned that a 787 fuselage's underside will shatter in a crash, just as depicted in the 2005 simulation.

One worry is that as the plastic fuselage slides along the ground after the initial impact, the broken underside of the hull could rip open, creating holes through which toxic fumes and smoke from burning composite material might pour in.

Yates asked the FAA during the public comment phase of the 787 certification process to require a fire test with a full-scale ruptured fuselage, rather than an intact panel. His idea is to test if toxic fumes from burning composites will be substantial and penetrate any rupture.

The FAA rejected the request, Bahrami said, because in a post-crash conflagration, "the fuel fire is by far the biggest problem," not the burning of the composites in the fuselage skin.

Jenks said that after the drop test, the bottom of the composite plastic fuselage was "crumpled, creased, cracked and fractured," but with only "small holes" in the skin.

"There weren't big, gaping holes," Jenks said. "I don't think there's any reason to believe there'll be more holes per se in a composite fuselage."

Dan Mooney, Boeing vice president of development for the 787-8, said the composite fuselage doesn't break like glass.

"It doesn't shatter and disperse in lots of pieces," Mooney said. "It tends to hang together by the fibers."

Mooney said Boeing's tests show the burning of the plastic resin won't add significant risk.

In February, Boeing issued official guidelines telling airport firefighters they can use standard techniques to put out a 787 fire, adding that "from a toxicity perspective, the composite structure … poses no greater hazard than an aluminum fuselage."

Boeing has completed all its 787 fire testing and submitted the results to the FAA for certification.

"We believe we're done," said Mooney.

FAA spokesman Allen Kenitzer said the agency's review of Boeing's data on a 787 crash impact and fire is almost complete. Certification is expected this fall.

"We don't anticipate any problems or unique difficulties with the remaining work," Kenitzer said.

Copyright © 2010, Chicago Tribune

(Wal) Martian Insights into Pop

Wal-Mart pops onto scene, makes its mark - chicagotribune.com: "Wal-Mart pops onto scene, makes its mark

Beverage pricing points to retailer's influence on rivals, suppliers

By Julie Wernau, Tribune reporter

Walk into the lone Chicago Wal-Mart to stock up on pop in the summer heat and there, rising like a palm tree in an oasis, is a stack of Coke cases at a special price: 24 cans for $5.

A brand-name beverage like Coca-Cola for about 20 cents a can is more than a great deal. It's a sign of Wal-Mart's purchasing might, a warning shot to competitors and less than good news for the beverage industry.

Experts call that kind of intimidating power "disruption," and it will come to the Chicago area in a bigger way now that Wal-Mart plans to open a second store in the city, on its way to what it hopes will be dozens more urban locations.

Squeezed by higher bottling costs and a decade of stagnant pricing, beverage companies had only recently managed to persuade consumers to pay more for soda, according to industry analysts. Now, in one swoop, Wal-Mart has gotten attention for itself while taking a bite out of soda sales at other chains.

The promotion, which began shortly before Memorial Day, is pushing other retailers to roll back prices to pre-1990s levels to compete. And it has stirred new fears about Wal-Mart's ability to wield its massive buying power to work against the interests of the industries that supply their stores.

"They just have so many stores that they can really push back, they can really squeeze, not just soft drink companies but other food firms, to force them to take the hit and take their margins down," said Philip Gorham, an equity analyst with Chicago-based Morningstar who covers the beverage sector.

Wal-Mart's power is indisputable. It is the largest retailer in the world, which gives it the ability to negotiate with manufacturers to get lower prices that other stores, particularly smaller independent ones, may struggle to match.

Price cuts on such products as soda are part of an aggressive initiative Wal-Mart announced in October 2008 and began to roll out in spring 2009. In May of this year, deep discounts on products like pop, ketchup and other items raised Wal-Mart's pricing lead versus other competitors fivefold compared with the previous month. Analysts say the promotions are expected to appear around every holiday through the second half of this year.

"Wal-Mart is so huge that any action they take tends to have a big consequence. So if they do a rollback on a core product, they drive huge volume, so much that they disrupt the supply chain of producers," said David Garfield, who is based in Chicago and leads the Consumer Products practice of AlixPartners.

Soda is the single-most consumed beverage in the U.S., and a $70 billion-plus market. For many retailers, it is also considered an important driver for pushing traffic into their stores. But for the megachains like Costco and Wal-Mart, soda is less important, which gives them more negotiating clout.

"There's been a power shift over the past 10 years where the power has shifted from packaged-goods firms to these huge grocery store chains," said Gorham at Morningstar.

A dispute over pricing in 2009 led Costco to stop selling a number of Coca-Cola brands in its stores. And while the two sides eventually made up, it represented the first time a retailer was bold enough to go up against a powerful brand like Coca-Cola.

Wal-Mart can afford to be bold, and its impact is readily seen. Median sales decrease 40 percent at similar high-volume stores when a Wal-Mart enters the market, 17 percent at supermarkets and about 6 percent at drugstores, according to a study published in June 2009 by researchers at multiple universities and led by the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H.

Stores that fail to prepare by adopting a new strategy to survive tend to feel the greatest impact. Similar high-volume stores, like Target, fare the worst when a Wal-Mart moves into an area because they are forced to compete by reducing regular prices, the study found.

"We're fiercely competitive on price and routinely shop our competitors, including Wal-Mart, to ensure we're providing our guests with the best possible value," said Jennifer Mooney, a spokeswoman for Target.

Mooney also said the chain has a promise to match any print-advertised price on an identical product featured by a local competitor, including Wal-Mart.

Drugstores like Deerfield-based Walgreens are the least impacted, according to the study, and are generally able to stay afloat by increasing their assortment size.

"Overall we compete very well with Wal-Mart," said Jim Cohn, a spokesman for Walgreens. "We cater to a wide customer base, and often the need or occasion for a Walgreens shopping trip is different from many of our competitors."

Supermarkets, the study found, can survive by doing their best to differentiate themselves from Wal-Mart, rather than attempting to compete.

Karen May, a spokeswoman for Jewel-Osco, said the company has responded to Wal-Mart's deep discounts by offering a variety of promotions "every day" and by promoting low-cost private-label brands. She said Jewel-Osco has not seen a change in pop sales since Wal-Mart's promotions began.

A Dominick's spokeswoman said "customers have other fluids they continue to look for," including water, sports beverages and energy drinks.

But a recent analysis by J.P. Morgan found that Wal-Mart's rollbacks on pop have already upset grocery stores and have the potential to disrupt the beverage industry.

Following Wal-Mart's soda promotions in anticipation of Memorial Day weekend, national soda sales shifted dramatically to Wal-Mart and away from other grocers, the equity research firm found. Memorial Day weekend is traditionally seen as a lift for beverage sales, but sales volume dropped 9 percent during the four weeks ended June 12, according to data from the Nielsen Co.

More of that disruption may come to Chicago.

Today, just one Wal-Mart stands within Chicago's city limits. But following a six-year battle to open more stores in Chicago, the behemoth saw progress last week when the City Council voted unanimously to let Wal-Mart build a second store on the South Side.

The chain says it hopes to open dozens of stores in the city through a community partnership agreement that would mean millions of dollars for Chicago charities and a guaranteed higher-than-minimum wage for Wal-Mart employees in Chicago.

Wal-Mart's impact goes beyond retailers, but the exact impact on manufacturers isn't clear because few will discuss private negotiations. Some brands have said that Wal-Mart pays for big promotions itself, essentially taking a loss on some sales to bring in more traffic. There are indications that manufacturers also are making concessions to keep Wal-Mart from bullying them off the shelves.

A Wal-Mart spokeswoman said the company does not comment on pricing strategy, industry speculation or sales on a particular product. She said lower soda prices are part of the company's commitment to "helping families save money so they can live better."

Representatives for Dr Pepper Snapple Group and PepsiCo Group did not reply to requests for comment. Coca-Cola said the company does not comment on customer relationships.

Analysts say when customers see cheap pop in bulk quantities, the tendency is to stock up, which means a lull in sales following a promotion.

"The risk of such rollbacks are several," J.P. Morgan wrote in its analysis. "For one, a rollback creates a powerful lift and thus demand for a product, necessitating a production spike and disruption to the supply chain. Inventories can be thrown off kilter. And ultralow pricing poses a threat to brand equity."

Pradeep Chintagunta, a marketing professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, said retailers are less likely to react to low pricing when a single Wal-Mart moves to an area. But the threat of dozens of Wal-Marts could mean significant changes for Chicago, particularly among chains that rarely localize their promotions on a store-by-store basis.

Kusum Ailawadi, professor of marketing at the Tuck School of Business, said chain retailers usually promote according to "zones," although they could benefit from a more nuanced strategy.

"Let's say you now define this as a Wal-Mart zone. Retailers I've spoken with have said, 'We essentially cut our prices down almost across-the-board but especially in the departments where we have more overlap with Wal-Mart,'" she said.

Tribune reporter Alejandra Cancino contributed to this report.

Illinois budget deficit

Payback Time - Budget in the Red, Illinois Has Stopped Paying Bills - NYTimes.com: "For the last few years, California stood more or less unchallenged as a symbol of the fiscal collapse of states during the recession. Now Illinois has shouldered to the fore, as its dysfunctional political class refuses to pay the state’s bills and refuses to take the painful steps — cuts and tax increases — to close a deficit of at least $12 billion, equal to nearly half the state’s budget.

Then there is the spectacularly mismanaged pension system, which is at least 50 percent underfunded and, analysts warn, could push Illinois into insolvency if the economy fails to pick up."

Too Smart for the Road?

Four in 10 drivers have been hit, nearly hit by distracted drivers - The Problem Solver: "'Nearly 4 in 10 drivers have been hit or nearly hit by a driver distracted by their cell phone,' according to a June Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company phone survey of 1,004 people, conducted by Harris Interactive. And an April Nationwide survey found that more than one in four smart phone users admit to using mobile applications while driving.

Distracted driving should not be be taken lightly. In 2008, 6,000 people died in crashes involving distracted drivers and more than a half million people were injured, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

'The bottom line is Americans can’t seem to resist the temptation to use the new technology,' said Bill Windsor, Nationwide's associate vice president for consumer safety.


Nationwide's June survey found the most frequently used apps are ones that access email, the Internet and Facebook and Twitter."