from reviews of the BusinessWeek article:
Nickname: Steve
Review: The one-piece fuselage piece that was scrapped was the ninth prototype section fabricated, and made in mid-April. The previous eight were fine. As an experiment with Boeing to try to improve durability, Janicki had changed the resin mix in the composite material it used to make the mandrel that failed. Bair said Boeing will go back to the former resin mix, which had produced "very good and very consistent" results, and will make the two replacement barrels on a Janicki mandrel with that proven formula. "On the one that failed, we learned some stuff and made modifications. Now they are bullet-proof," said Janicki. "I'm not seeing any kind of panic [at Boeing]," he said. "You can't do development work and not run into problems. But there are no fundamental problems." Bair dismissed assertions in the BusinessWeek story of serious problems with the nose sections and concern over the airplane's weight.
He rejected the statement that Boeing deemed "unacceptable" the first two 787 nose-and-cockpit sections. He said the first Wichita-built section "turned out far better than we thought it would. "While Bair admitted the 787 is still about 2.5 percent over its target weight, he said that target includes an extra safety margin beyond what's needed to meet the fuel-efficiency promises made to airlines. "We will meet all the commitments we made to our customers, even if [the weight] doesn't get any better," Bair said. "All the moving pieces on the schedule are not exactly where we'd hoped they'd be, but when we look at the whole program, there's nothing there that says we won't deliver the airplane when we're supposed to."
Nickname: canute
Review: Niccolo, the 787 is a tube and wing airliner with a conventional fuselage configuration which, btw, is not an optimal constructiuon from the point of view of structural mechanics, due to all the pits and cutouts in load-carrying structure. Therefore, the fuselage of the 787 contains rather big cutouts such as pits for the nose and main landing gears, wing/fuselage juncture as well as the cargo hatches. The CFRP carbon materials used on the 787 have significantly lower shear and contortion properties than Al-alloys, as well as a much higher sensitivity to the presence of cutouts. Additionally, carbon fibres are highly sensitive to impact loads. The 787 looks like it must employ a relatively high number of extra rivets to attach frames to the fuselage (just in case the attachment of the frames turn out to be not strong enough). This, of course, means more drilling of holes in the fuselage. On the other hand, future all-composite airbuses will most certainly fly around with a fuselage.
where fasteners are only used to bolt major components together. Thus we come to the crux of the matter: The fuselage of the 787 is designed poorly and prematurely. A mature composite fuselage should have a double shell, and should not be constrained by the standard tube and wing fuselage configuration. However, a lot of research and testing remains to be done. Composite researchers are working on combining infusion and microwave technologies, an area which holds out the prospect of enormous savings in energy and dramatically shorter cycle times. Furthermore, the strength of carbon materials can be improved by 50 to 60 percent and its rigidity and impact resistance should be virtually doubled through the introduction of nanoparticles.