Boeing has postponed the long awaited first flight of the all new, all plastic, 787 Dreamliner. This is a tremendous disappointment to Boeing and Boeing customers.
Apparently something (no photos so it could be anything) showed up during static wing bending tests on the ground. According to Aviation Week the problem was "delamination and deformation on body (presumably wing-to-body) join points during a routine stress test". The wings are attached to the body with titanium bolts. There was discussion of a fix, stiffeners. "The parts needed are small, only an inch or two." Eighteen (one for each bolt?) will be applied to the top side of the join.
More discussion followed about the Computer Aided Design (CAD) procedures. The author clearly feels that this problem should have showed up in computer simulations long ago, and he faults Boeing's CAD work.
For Boeing's sake lets hope the one inch stiffeners are readily available and solve the problem.
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