After 25 years of unremitting development, the aircraft manufacturing industry has finally entered a new era. Military aircraft have completed the transition from aluminum to composite materials, and now commercial aircraft manufacturing giants are also eager to meet the innovation of manufacturing technology. Boeing decided to use composite materials for its new model 787, creating a precedent for commercial aircraft manufacturing. This technological change is bound to bring about a fundamental change in aircraft manufacturing technology, methods and strategies!
After more than 80 years of experience, aluminum aircraft began to fade in sight. Since the 1920s, aluminum has been used to replace aircraft and other materials for aircraft manufacturing. By the mid-1930s, this transformation was almost completely complete (except Spruce Goose). Aircraft manufacturing has changed from a manual mode to a mechanized mode, but the construction process is still labor intensive. For more than 60 years, aluminum has become the material of choice for the manufacture of military and commercial aircraft.
Now, the status of aluminum begins to be challenged by fibers (high-strength carbon fibers penetrate deep into epoxy molecules). In the late 1980s and early 1990s, this carbon fiber-containing composite began to be used significantly in aircraft manufacturing instead of aluminum. On the military side, this shift quickly shifted from some composite parts on aluminum structures to the entire aircraft, and true composite military aircraft came out. Currently, this shift has begun to spread to commercial aircraft.
The old form of aircraft assembly is to connect thousands of aluminum parts with various rivets, and now only need to complete the connection of large, prefabricated composite fuselage, wing, tail and other major components. These structures can be produced by automated CNC composite tape laying machines, rather than by hand assembling a small piece of a piece by a large number of assemblers. Therefore, the number of parts required for manufacturing, booking, tracking, processing, and storage in the entire aircraft manufacturing process is geometrically reduced. In terms of performance, composite materials make aircraft lighter, more efficient, and more resistant to fatigue. This shift provides an excellent opportunity for those who quickly adopt composite materials and have the ability to provide composite processing.
With Premier and Hawker using aluminum wings, Boeing decided to achieve a leap-forward transition, and the Boeing 787 uses composite materials to reduce aircraft weight and improve fuel efficiency. This aircraft, which can travel from 200 to 250 people, will become "the first commercial aircraft with basic composite structures made of advanced composite materials, including wings and fuselage." Composite structure can significantly reduce the number of parts and reduce the weight of aircraft by 20% - WaltGillette (Boeing vice president of Engineering, Manufacturing and Partner Alignment)
Other recent commercial aircraft composites use less than 10% to 25%, while Boeing aircraft use 50%. The Airbus A380 is used in 23% of the material, mainly for the other parts of the tail and the body that are not stressed. This cone structure – 4770mm long and 2550mm in diameter at both ends, 400mm – is produced by the Cincinnati VIPER ® 3000 winding system.
Figure 1 CINCINNATI VIPER 3000
Boeing has noticed the functional advantages of a fully composite fuselage – it can make the window larger, the pressure inside the cabin smaller and increase the humidity inside the cabin. The fuselage section is nearly 6m wide, which gives passengers the highest level of comfort. This fuselage will be produced by Boeing's partners through the Cincinnati VIPER® winding system.
Automated Lay-Up automatic tape laying machine
Figure 2 Automated Lay-Up automatic tape laying machine
Early composite aircraft parts were hand laid, making aircraft manufacturing a slow, versatile manual labor, casting a shadow over the development of the aviation industry. Obviously, the aircraft industry urgently needs automated systems to increase production, enhance the controllability of the manufacturing process, reduce waste, and reduce costs.
The fuselage section and other full-surface structures can be completed by the winding system. Those flat surfaces with less curvature, such as wing panels, ailerons, vertical tails, and flat tail skins, can be completed by an automatic tape laying machine. The automatic tape laying machine can accurately place a large number of carbon fibers on a rotating or stationary model with an accuracy of ±1.27mm. This machine can independently distribute, compact, clamp, cut and reshape 32 carbon fibers to form a wrinkle-free curve, curved surface or mixed curved plane. This kind of control can realize the staggered laying of carbon fiber under the condition of ensuring the best angle, laying layers to maximize the strength and hardness of the parts, and to obtain parts with different wall thickness while minimizing the weight. Through the programmed on/off/cutting process, various opening devices (windows, doors, hatches, etc.) can be produced, and the fine edges of the mesh structure can also be produced. This approach optimizes structural integration, reduces material waste by 35%, reduces subsequent processing requirements, and manual operations.
Advanced control and software designed specifically for composite machining make programming and control of multi-axis motion very easy and easy to produce complex shapes. Authorized software can parse CAD tools and component information into multi-axis instructions. This allows the path and tool steering required to apply the composite to the surface to be achieved while maintaining a flat-fit hybrid drum. The integrity of the part program, the automatic anti-collision post-processing monitoring and proofreading function are ensured by a 3D simulation block.
For simple curved and flat parts, a curved tape spreader (CTL) and a flat belt spreader (FTL) are available. The Cincinnati/low-rail automatic tapelayer can be used for the laying of 3, 6 and 12in strips on the flat and curved contour surfaces. The device is controlled by a PC, and the X-axis stroke can be increased by 12 æ¯ every 3.6m in the X-axis direction to increase the flexibility of movement in the X-axis direction. The gantry width is adjustable, and the standard model is 200in. 10 axes, five of them are on the gantry, five are on the head, and the Z-axis beat can be adjusted according to the actual application. The A-axis is located at the head of the strip, which can cover the surface parts. The height of the beam guide is based on the actual Need to set.
The Cincinnati/low rail automatic tapelayer mainly consists of two types: a 4-axis flat belt winder (FTL) and a 5-axis surface tape laying machine (CTL). The flat belt spreader can be used to cover flat and variable thickness 6 Ì‹ and 12 Ì‹ strips. The users are mainly European and American aircraft manufacturers. The surface tapelayer can realize the covering of full-surface or partial-surface parts. The model has two forms, one of which can realize the simultaneous laying of 3 Ì‹ and 6 Ì‹ strips, and the other can be realized. Simultaneous layup of 6 Ì‹ and 12 Ì‹ strips. Users are located in the United States, European countries, Japan, Indonesia and other countries and regions. As the leading company in the aviation field, Boeing has purchased more than 20 Cincinnati automatic tape laying machines, mainly used in the production of military aircraft and commercial aircraft. In 1992, Boeing used Cincinnati automatic tape laying machine to produce Boeing 777 vertical tail and flat tail skin. . Airbus uses the flat and curved automatic tape laying machine to produce the A330/A340 tail skin, which is 9m long, 2m wide and weighs 200Kg. Nashville Aerospace uses an automatic tape laying machine to produce the Airbus A330/A340 wing ailerons, reducing labor time by 70%.
The multi-axis automation equipment described above is transforming the future of the global aviation industry through automation in the aircraft industry!
This article was issued by the Journal of Mechanical Workers (Cold Processing) in the 11th issue of 2006, so stay tuned!
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