Investigation of an automated dry fiber preforming process for an aircraft fuselage demonstrator using collaborating robots

摘要

High-performance carbon fiber-reinforced plastics (CFRP) see a continuous growth of their share in structural weight. In particular, in Aerospace, this includes the production of large components, where the key issue of significant high costs remains persistent. The Center for Lightweight Production Technologies in Augsburg as a part of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) addresses this problem with solutions for process automation to increase repeatability, process robustness, and cost-efficiency. This paper presents an approach for automated preforming of large CFRP parts by means of collaborative robots. Investigations include process development for robotic handling of large-carbon fiber cut- pieces and validation on a full-scale demonstrator. The experimental verification is focused on a demonstrator geometry that represents a fuselage section of a typical short- to mid-range aircraft. The work is completed by a discussion about the challenges, solution approaches, and observations. The presented semi-automated preforming process with collaborating robots is an important intermediate step on the way to a fully automated production process for large Aerospace parts made of CFRP.