DEVELOPMENT OF A COST EFFECTIVE COMPOSITE WINGBOX FOR SMALL AIRCRAFT

摘要

Composites have become well established within primary and secondary aerospace structures mainly because of their superb performance-to-weight ratio. However production costs and time-to-market are becoming increasingly decisive factors in the design, both for the large and small airplane manufacturers. Composite material raw prices are comparatively high and the key to cost price reduction lies in count part reduction and automating manufacture using techniques such as Automated Fiber Placement (AFP). Within the EU funded project CESAR (Cost Effective Small Aircraft) NLR has helped to develop and manufactured a semi-span composite wingbox representative for small aircraft. This was done together with other partners, being Piaggio Aero Industries, CIRA, MERL, HAI and IoA. VZLU has performed the full scale static test on the assembled wingbox and has manufactured the metal hinge brackets for the wingbox.rnThis paper describes the development and manufacture of this composite multi-spar wingbox concept, with specific details on design for manufacturability when using composites and AFP, design and manufacture of AFP tooling, AFP manufacture of spars and skins, assembly of the composite wingbox and cost - weight comparison with the aluminum benchmark wingbox.