Michael Kupke

Collision-free path planning of industrial cooperating robots for aircraft fuselage production

Due to rising energy costs aircraft should have a lower kerosine consumption. To achieve this aircraft manufacturers increase the usage of high performance, lightweight materials such as carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRP). At the moment production needs a lot of manual steps. However the airplane structures to be built e.g. a fuselage, are up to 30m long. It is strongly recommended to automate these processes. To build these parts automatically the German Aerospace Center (DLR) has developed and built a large (30m × 15m × 7 m) robotic facility where multiple robots which move on linear axes share the same workspace. The sharing is important because the production process requires that the robots cooperate. Intelligent methods are necessary to generate collision-free paths for these robots.

3.8 Production Technology in Aeronautics: Upscaling Technologies From Lab to Shop Floor

With a constantly (i.e., exponentially) growing commercial market, the Aeronautics industry demands innovations on the shop floor at an increasing pace. This is changing the way of working in research and technology (R&T) and also its scope. The innovation cycles become shorter, the linkage to the shop floor becomes tighter and the scope is growing toward the ability to industrialize.

Corrugated composites: production-integrated quality assurance in carbon fiber reinforced thermoplastic sine wave beam production

Abstract Carbon fiber-reinforced thermoplastics offer the possibility for short lead times and dustless assembly in aerospace applications. However, their great potential for efficient processing to date is not entirely exploited. At the Center for Lightweight Production Technology (ZLP) in Augsburg smart automation of thermoplastic composite production is investigated. To assess the overall process chain a sine wave beam designed as crash-absorber serves as demonstrator. The production process from as-delivered material to final assembly is presented. In addition to non-destructive testing at the end of the value adding process chain, production-integration quality assurance, and process characterization serve to evaluate each process step. In this context, water-coupled ultrasonic testing as an established method in aerospace production is used to assess the degree of consolidation after vacuum consolidation and press-forming. Thus, quality issues and crucial process parameters can be identified and optimized to improve robustness.