on november 2, 2015, the home-made large passenger aircraft of commercial aircraft corporation of china (comac), the c919, rolled off the final assembly line. among the large numbers of suppliers, northwest rubber & plastics institute (in short northwest institute) affiliated to chemchina took advantage of its competitive edge in rubber sealing products to contribute to the passenger aircraft industry in china. the rubber seal elements on most of the cabin doors, airfoils and outer wing-boxed were developed and produced by northwest institute, which thus became the only rubber sealing elements supporting enterprise of c919 in china.
in 2009, the c919 project was launched under the background of global purchase. with its technological advantages accumulated in decades and outstanding problem-solving capability, northwest institute gained the order of sealing elements on the first plane, and thus broke the technique monopoly of large foreign companies. to fulfill the research tasks, the institute established a problem-solving team for the project. in giving priority to the quality and schedule, the team integrated the processes of design, production and test, and as a result developed many key techniques from scratch.
in the early stage, starting from structural design, the team solved technical problems including mould design and processing, development of rubber sealing element materials, and molding and developed key molding techniques of hollow structure and multi-material sealing elements. some typical products passed airworthiness review. from 2014 to january 2015, the institute developed and delivered more than 600 sealing products with more than 400 specifications for the first plane, gaining the appraisal of the customer. for this contribution, northwest institute was awarded the silver prize of 2014 comac outstanding suppliers. in 2015, the institute took the task of developing the sealing elements for static testing plane, the second plane of c919. so far, the almost all the products have been delivered.
in working for c919, northwest institute mobilized the best resources and spared no efforts. the four teams solved many technical problems in a short time through consulting with the customer, coordinating with the production section and continuously improving their techniques.
to make more contribution to the development of home-made passenger aircraft, based on current achievements on c919 sealing elements, northwest institute is taking several tasks of developing rubber sealing elements. so far, some sealing products of arj21 have been supplied, and the xinzhou-700 cabin door sealing elements project has been launched.
