Safran Landing Systems (formerly Messier-Bugatti-Dowty) is a French company involved in the design, development, manufacture and customer support of all types of aircraft landing gear, wheels and brakes and a wholly owned subsidiary of Safran SA. It is the world's largest manufacturer of aircraft landing gear.The company can be traced to the establishment of a 50/50 joint venture in 1995 between France's Messier and the United Kingdom's Dowty Group, then owned by TI Group. Messier-Dowty was purchased outright from TI Group by the SNECMA group in 1998. The 2005 merger of SAGEM and SNECMA made Messier-Dowty part of the new Safran company. In May 2011, Messier-Bugatti-Dowty was formed through the merger of three Safran subsidiaries: Messier-Dowty, Messier-Bugatti and Messier Services. In May 2016, Messier-Bugatti-Dowty became SAFRAN Landing Systems.Safran Landing Systems operates a number of sites across the globe, in Asia, Europe, Canada, Mexico and United States; workshare is divided between these locations, each one typically specialising in an aspect of landing gear design, manufacture and support. Its main headquarters is located in Vélizy, outside Paris. The company's projects are divided into two business units: Airbus & European Programs and Boeing & North American Programs..
Workers in aeronautics face high risks of low-back disorders (LBDs). Although occupational passive back exoskeletons show preventive potential during trunk flexion tasks, few studies have been conducted in real workplaces. This field study aims to assess the effects of a rigid passive back exoskeleton on back neuromuscular activity, trunk kinematics and perceived discomfort, as well as the user acceptance. Ten male employees from an aeronautics manufacturer performed their routine polishing activity, later segmented into seven representative tasks, with and without the Laevo FLEX exoskeleton. The results showed significant reductions of 7-25% in erector spinae (ES) activity in four tasks. The average trunk flexion angle was only reduced for one task. Perceived discomfort was not significantly impacted by the exoskeleton. Acceptance was mixed but overall positive. This supports the exoskeleton's beneficial impact in aeronautical polishing tasks and more generally highlights the potential of such devices for trunk-flexion activities in real settings.
Effects of passive back-support exoskeletons (BSEs) on internal spinal loading during aeronautical tasks remain unclear. We quantified changes in L5/S1 compression force while 19 male participants performed representative aeronautical polishing and handling tasks (sustained flexed inspection, simulated polishing, and asymmetric load transfers) under three BSE conditions: no BSE control, BackX and Laevo FLEX. Whole-body kinematics were measured with wearable inertial sensors, and peak and time-averaged compression forces were estimated using musculoskeletal modeling. During inspection and polishing tasks, both BackX and Laevo reduced time-averaged compression by 14% and 6%, respectively, indicating decreased cumulative spinal loading during sustained trunk flexion. During asymmetric transfers, Laevo showed greater benefits, reducing time-averaged compression by 17% during lifting and reducing peak and time-averaged compression by 13% and 26%, respectively, during lowering. Overall, passive BSEs primarily reduced cumulative rather than peak spinal loading, supporting their selective use for aeronautical tasks involving sustained trunk flexion and asymmetric handling.
Abstract With the progressive deployment of MBSE in the (aerospace) industry come new challenges, already identified and stated in the INCOSE Vision and other places. Among them is the digital continuity between OEMs and their suppliers, and especially the interoperability for architecture models between a system supplier and its customers. Even if standards exist for models in terms of language (SysML V2 is a great example), the available tools have different implementations and little native exchange capabilities on top of the basic language. In addition to that, the companies use their own tailored methods. The consequence is that most of the companies suffer to collaborate between different methods, languages and tools. To exchange architecture models today, both parties need to define an exchange protocol, encompassing the language, the modeling method, and a common data exchange format or tool. SysML V2 will arrive to help with the language part of the problem (which is good news). However, the language has recently become official, few proper tools for SysML V2 are yet available in the market, the SysML V2 API has not the proper semantic level, and as will be exposed in the paper, many high level (human, not language) semantic interoperability problems remain. The first and second parts of this paper will develop the challenges in all these aspects, from an industrial supplier perspective, with different interoperability scenarios. The third part will describe the infrastructure layers set up to allow interoperability as per the framework described in part two, and the industrial solutions for each layer to make it real. Finally, the fourth part of the paper will demonstrate feasibility and results in a practical use case on architecture models transformation. The scenario is from a supplier framework with a specific tool and a Domain Specific Language to a customer framework, with a different tool, a different language and a different modeling methodology. As a conclusion, the paper demonstrates the capability to interoperate architecture models from completely different frameworks with the appropriate methodology and tool.
