Wirraway
10th Jun 2004, 16:05
Fri "The Australian"
Local company makes airliners safer
By Steve Creedy
June 11, 2004
AN idea which had its genesis in Australia's last major airline disaster looks set to become a lifesaver for future travellers and deliver a significant windfall to a Perth company.
Structural Monitoring Systems (SMS), which recently added former Qantas engineering chief David Forsyth to its board, wants to raise $3.75 million by floating 15 million shares on the Australian Stock Exchange within the next two months.
SMS is marketing a technology that uses alternating tubes of air and a constant vacuum to monitor structural health and detect cracks before they become a problem. It was invented and refined over three decades by former pilot Ken Davey as a way to prevent a repeat of a 1968 aviation disaster that saw 26 people die when a MacRobertson Miller Airlines Vickers Viscount crashed near Port Hedland.
Davey, who was on his way north to take over another MMA flight, flew as a passenger on the Viscount the day before an undetected crack caused a catastrophic failure of the starboard wing. The fatigue fracture had been induced during a refit in a TAA workshop four years earlier.
"It was such a devastating thing," Davey says. "I knew the crew -- it was such a terrible thing and I thought at the time, why wasn't there some sort of system which could have detected this crack."
A small crack in a cathode ray tube in 1979 marked the first step on the road to the current vacuum-based technology.
Forsyth, who adds a weighty commercial aviation component to a board that already includes retired RAF Air Marshal Sir John Walker and retired RAAF Air Vice-Marshal Alan Reed, believes the idea has wide-ranging potential.
"It's just a question of making sure it gets done in the right manner and the idea can be developed. And they seem to have done a pretty good job, from what I've seen so far, of developing the technology," he says.
SMS has spent more than $14 million patenting, developing and proving the concept, called comparative vacuum monitoring (CVM).
While the technology has wider applications, the company has focused on aviation and is now attracting significant interest from airlines, the military and plane makers.
European company Airbus has established a team to work on CVM technology and has 12 programs planned for this year, including full-scale testing of the new A380 "super jumbo".
Airbus has funded research in Melbourne into building the technology into composite materials to monitor for disbonding, delamination and impact damage.
Boeing has also approached the company to address an issue with MD 80 aircraft and expressed interest in composites, which are expected to make up about half of its planned 7E7 "Dreamliner". The first CVM system installed in a commercial airliner is now operating on a Northwest Airlines DC-9 in the US as part of a Federal Aviation Administration certification process. Military forces looking at the technology include the RAAF, the Australian Army, the RAF and the US Air Force. The US Navy has had CVM installed on a helicopter since 2002 and is moving to expand the program. The Australian military has the system on a P3 Orion and is undertaking a two-year environmental and durability testing program.
Forsyth agrees the technology has wide military applications because of the kind of stress such aircraft are put under.
But he sees negotiations with manufacturers Airbus and Boeing as perhaps the most critical step.
"Obviously the aspect with huge potential is to be able to monitor composites and sandwich materials into the future," he says.
"You could actually build that sort of technology into a new aircraft or a new structure or a new machine ... and it's actually then part of the original design."
He also believes there is a potential for using CVM in certification as well as design development and testing.
He points to work on Airbus landing components already under way by British Aerospace and Messier Dowty.
Undercarriages can fail suddenly, as Qantas found out in 2000, when a flaw introduced 20 years earlier during manufacturing was believed to have caused the failure of the right wing strut of a Boeing 747-300 in Rome.
Forsyth says CVM technology can detect when a crack first starts and follow its progression.
"So in theory what you can do on something like an undercarriage, which breaks quickly, is pick it up as soon as it starts to crack and hopefully capture it before it disintegrates and blows itself to bits," he says.
SMS, which is incorporated in Britain, had originally planned to list in London but decided on Australia as it believed it would provide better shareholder value.
It is considering offering its 15 million shares at 25c each.
Each share would have one option attached with an exercise price of 20c exercisable on or before April 30, 2007.
The move would bring the company's market capitalisation to $43 million.
=========================================
Local company makes airliners safer
By Steve Creedy
June 11, 2004
AN idea which had its genesis in Australia's last major airline disaster looks set to become a lifesaver for future travellers and deliver a significant windfall to a Perth company.
Structural Monitoring Systems (SMS), which recently added former Qantas engineering chief David Forsyth to its board, wants to raise $3.75 million by floating 15 million shares on the Australian Stock Exchange within the next two months.
SMS is marketing a technology that uses alternating tubes of air and a constant vacuum to monitor structural health and detect cracks before they become a problem. It was invented and refined over three decades by former pilot Ken Davey as a way to prevent a repeat of a 1968 aviation disaster that saw 26 people die when a MacRobertson Miller Airlines Vickers Viscount crashed near Port Hedland.
Davey, who was on his way north to take over another MMA flight, flew as a passenger on the Viscount the day before an undetected crack caused a catastrophic failure of the starboard wing. The fatigue fracture had been induced during a refit in a TAA workshop four years earlier.
"It was such a devastating thing," Davey says. "I knew the crew -- it was such a terrible thing and I thought at the time, why wasn't there some sort of system which could have detected this crack."
A small crack in a cathode ray tube in 1979 marked the first step on the road to the current vacuum-based technology.
Forsyth, who adds a weighty commercial aviation component to a board that already includes retired RAF Air Marshal Sir John Walker and retired RAAF Air Vice-Marshal Alan Reed, believes the idea has wide-ranging potential.
"It's just a question of making sure it gets done in the right manner and the idea can be developed. And they seem to have done a pretty good job, from what I've seen so far, of developing the technology," he says.
SMS has spent more than $14 million patenting, developing and proving the concept, called comparative vacuum monitoring (CVM).
While the technology has wider applications, the company has focused on aviation and is now attracting significant interest from airlines, the military and plane makers.
European company Airbus has established a team to work on CVM technology and has 12 programs planned for this year, including full-scale testing of the new A380 "super jumbo".
Airbus has funded research in Melbourne into building the technology into composite materials to monitor for disbonding, delamination and impact damage.
Boeing has also approached the company to address an issue with MD 80 aircraft and expressed interest in composites, which are expected to make up about half of its planned 7E7 "Dreamliner". The first CVM system installed in a commercial airliner is now operating on a Northwest Airlines DC-9 in the US as part of a Federal Aviation Administration certification process. Military forces looking at the technology include the RAAF, the Australian Army, the RAF and the US Air Force. The US Navy has had CVM installed on a helicopter since 2002 and is moving to expand the program. The Australian military has the system on a P3 Orion and is undertaking a two-year environmental and durability testing program.
Forsyth agrees the technology has wide military applications because of the kind of stress such aircraft are put under.
But he sees negotiations with manufacturers Airbus and Boeing as perhaps the most critical step.
"Obviously the aspect with huge potential is to be able to monitor composites and sandwich materials into the future," he says.
"You could actually build that sort of technology into a new aircraft or a new structure or a new machine ... and it's actually then part of the original design."
He also believes there is a potential for using CVM in certification as well as design development and testing.
He points to work on Airbus landing components already under way by British Aerospace and Messier Dowty.
Undercarriages can fail suddenly, as Qantas found out in 2000, when a flaw introduced 20 years earlier during manufacturing was believed to have caused the failure of the right wing strut of a Boeing 747-300 in Rome.
Forsyth says CVM technology can detect when a crack first starts and follow its progression.
"So in theory what you can do on something like an undercarriage, which breaks quickly, is pick it up as soon as it starts to crack and hopefully capture it before it disintegrates and blows itself to bits," he says.
SMS, which is incorporated in Britain, had originally planned to list in London but decided on Australia as it believed it would provide better shareholder value.
It is considering offering its 15 million shares at 25c each.
Each share would have one option attached with an exercise price of 20c exercisable on or before April 30, 2007.
The move would bring the company's market capitalisation to $43 million.
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