Case Studies

A tier-1 flight controls company was designing an innovative system for a new large commercial aircraft and required a hydraulic reservoir. EHA guidelines require that these reservoirs be 100% maintenance free.

Our customer was developing a new aircraft, which required a duct with a flexible connection. The incumbent design used a non-metal flexible seal which suffered significant performance degradations under high operating temperatures and required frequent replacement.

Traditional elastomer-based seals could not be used by our customer, a large manufacturer of gas turbines, due to their inability to withstand the high temperature environment.

Our customer, a large commercial airframer, challenged themselves to produce a next-generation aircraft concept that would deliver significantly lower total life cycle costs—including dramatically reduced-maintenance requirements.

Our customer—a large gas turbine manufacturer—required an automatic thermal valve that would actuate at temperatures exceeding 650°F. At the time, no existing thermal actuator technology could meet this specification.

The U.S. Air Force KC-135 Aerial Refueling Tanker was experiencing severe aircraft downtime due to a highly unreliable piston accumulator used on the fuel boom.

Our customer was looking to improve the performance of their wafer handling system. Their historical approach involved the use of an air cylinder and a welded metal bellows to seal the penetration into the vacuum chamber.

A large commercial aircraft engine manufacturer needed a fire safety relief valve to automatically drain hydraulic fluid from their gearbox should the temperature in the gearbox approach the flash point of the hydraulic fluid.

The legacy design for a thermal actuator relied upon an elastomer-encased wax medium. Unfortunately operating temperature extremes rapidly degraded the elastomer, resulting in a very high rate of failure for this device.

An existing pneumatic actuator was repurposed by a major producer of semiconductor equipment for a new application. The existing actuator performed sub-optimally in the new application due to lower forces, higher operational life requirements, and more aggressive processing chemistries.