Figure 1. Albany Engineered Composites jointly operates, with Safran, three facilities to manufacture fan blades, fan cases and spacers for CFM International’s LEAP aircraft engine. The blades shown here, freshly fabricated via resin transfer molding (RTM), are in Albany’s Rochester, N.H., U.S. plant, the company’s largest for case and blade production. Other Albany/Safran plants are in France and Mexico. Photo Credit, all images, Albany Engineered Composites

Given all the talk about the challenges associated with meeting high-volume manufacturing requirements in next-generation composite aerostructures, it’s easy to forget that there already are aerocomposite programs that demand a robust level of automation, industrialization and quality.

Such is the case at Albany Engineered Composites (AEC) in Rochester, N.H., U.S., where the company has been fabricating, since 2013, carbon fiber composite fan cases, fan blades (Fig. 1) and spacers for all variants of the LEAP aircraft engine, manufactured by CFM International (Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S.), a joint venture of General Electric (Cincinnati) and Safran Aircraft Engines (Courcouronnes, France). AEC is the sole source manufacturer of the fan cases, fan blades and fan blade spacers.