HIGH-RATE COMPOSITE DEPOSITION FOR AEROSTRUCTURES

A key challenge facing aero structure manufacturers is how to produce components at high quality and at high rate to satisfy the production targets of the next generation of aircraft. The presentation highlights a number of innovative production technologies explicitly targeting high-rate deposition of composite materials on high volume and large-scale aero structures such as flight control surfaces, wing covers and spars.

The proposed approach utilizes gantry or robot deployable end effectors and peripheral equipment to nest, cut, sort and kit composite plies before depositing them into double curvature tooling, inspecting and tacking in an effort to achieve rates in excess of 350Kg/hr. The approach acknowledges there is no one size fits all for the wide variety of geometries encountered in composite component manufacture and instead utilizes an array of end effectors and a common deployment platform to achieve optimal rates for a given target application.

Two deposition approaches are considered, conformal pick and place and roller. Pick and place has a benefit for complex ply shapes that need to be placed to a high tolerance. While roller deposition scores in terms of compactness. The strengths and weaknesses of the two technologies will be explored along with key performance capabilities and target application examples.