Airplane Hangar Doors 

Spec-Dor’s project to design and install airplane hangar doors at Exeltech presented a number of unique challenges not least because the hangar structure was made from wood.

Exeltech Aerospace is a maintainer of commercial jets, based at Pierre Elliot Trudeau airport in Montreal, Canada.  The contractor in charge of constructing their new hangar was Les enterprises J.G.Guimond Inc.   It was decided the most economical solution for the hangar was to build the structure in wood using the expertise of building contractors Nordic Engineered Wood.

The airplane hangar doors were 40m in length and 10.6m high with a tail-fin door in the centre measuring 4.4m by 3m.  The building was designed with space for door pockets, and required four doors – one on each side of the building.   Spec-Dor proposed a  4 blade bi-parting door solution for each of the four doors.  For the tail-fin doors, regular urethane insulated garage doors with openers were proposed.  This is an oft-used solution requiring only that the opener controls be integrated into the control panel.

Click the image for an enlarged view.

Custom hangar door fixings

With steel constructed buildings, the top rails are usually welded in place.  Obviously, this was not possible with a wooden construction.  Instead, Spec-Dor designed and built custom hangar door fixings.  These suspension brackets were bolted to the wooden beams to support the top guide rails.

Heated Rails

Heated rails are a must in Canada’s harsh winter climate.  This installation benefited from Spec-Dor’s unique heating conduits fitted between the bottom rails.  These conduits have pull pits for easy access to allow maintenance of the heating wires throughout the life of the door.  The heating wires can even be replaced if necessary unlike other installations where the wires are embedded in concrete.

The final result was four sets of doors that complemented the wooden structure of the hangar while meeting all functional and maintainability requirements.  This project required Spec-Dor’s expertise and experience in airplane hangar door design, manufacture and installation.