Manufacturing of an Advanced Wing Spar By FSW

Embraer and Aleris are performing a joint R&D project to develop a new wing spar concept using new manufacturing routes which allow to improve the buy-to-fly ratio which is one of the key requirements for future aircraft designs. Additionally the aircraft industry is looking for enhanced 7xxx plate materials targeting increased performance and weight savings compared to traditional alloys.

Within the past years FSW became more and more interesting for the aircraft industry to replace riveted structures and/or integral structures which require thick plate material. Even though a lot of development work on FSW of 7xxx alloys was performed in the past years there are still some open questions which need to be addressed such as the characterisation of the weld zone properties when different alloy grades are joined, the optimisation of the FSW parameters with regard to distortion reduction and the long term performance of welded wing structures under service like conditions.

In the frame of the joint R&D project between Embraer and Aleris a high performance wing spar was designed and produced via FSW using newly developed as well as conventional 7xxx alloys in different tempers.  The evaluation of the new wing spar concept includes a detailed characterisation of the properties of the different alloys used within this study. Additionally the manufacturing route was investigated.

The presentation will provide an overview of the status of the current development work performed by Aleris and Embraer, the characteristics of the alloys used within the study and will outline possibilities to improve the manufacturing route.