Automated Production of Large Fibre Metal Laminate Aircraft Structure Parts

Abstract

Fibre metal laminate (FML, GLARE©) materials, consisting of alternating layers of thin aluminium sheets and glass fibre prepregs, can be used for aircraft structure parts. For optimal structural properties and weight, large aluminium sheet sizes are desirable, making manual handling of the parts difficult. This paper introduces a software toolchain for the automated production of an aircraft body part using cooperating industrial robots. Multiple robots are required due to aluminium sheet of lengths up to 5800 mm and widths up to 1000 mm. No manual robot programming is required; all robot control programs are automatically created from CAD files and can be previewed in a 3D simulation environment. A full-scale demonstrator has been built using this toolchain.