Since March 2011 the factory for the production of composite wing and wing root for the MC-21 aircraft has been working in Ulyanovsk. This is the only enterprise in Russia where large-size power composite structures are produced by vacuum infusion method. By its scale this production is among the first three factories of the world level for the production of the integral force structures for the aviation industry. The plant is involved in the production of the wing and centerplane of the MC-21 aircraft.
At the end of 2022 Irkut Corporation received the confirmation of the major design change for the MC-21 aircraft regarding the wing made of Russian composites and the PD-14 engines. The wing with Russian components has been approved for serial production since the receipt of the main change – January 2023.
“At the enterprise in Ulyanovsk everything is made of Russian materials, there is practically nothing imported: composite materials are Russian, auxiliary materials are Russian, paints are Russian, sealants are Russian. The whole process has been import substituted here. Now the batch production is conducted on the factory, we make the small changes in the construction of the composite wing as some components are changed in the process of import substitution,” told Anatoly Gaidanskij, the First Deputy General Director of PJSC Irkut, General Director of JSC AeroComposite during the visit of the governor of Ulyanovsk region Alexey Russkikh to the factory.
According to Gaidanskij, these are not global changes and AeroComposite is in the schedules and plans that were set by Irkut Corporation.
As it was informed in the Ulyanovsk Region Development Corporation the enterprise plans to produce four aircraft sets for MC-21 this year, in 2024 – six with the further increase of the production volumes in accordance with the aircrafts production schedule.
At the initial stage of the composite wing creation the first knowledge and experience of the application of the American composite materials and operation of the imported equipment were gained at the Ulyanovsk enterprise. For the last two years the Russian enterprises have completely realized the import substitution of composition material for the MC-21 wing production.
At the present moment the industry faces the task and actively solves it – import substitution of the equipment. In February at AeroComposite the first displaying robot created by the Russian specialists and made at the Russian factories was launched. So far it is equipped with the imported manipulator but the exposition head, the software and the control system are Russian. Within the next few years, the task of import substitution of the main technological equipment for the production of the MS-21 wing will be completely solved.
