Development and Implementation of a Manufacturing Analysis Methodology for Aircraft Components

Abstract

In the last ten years, the airlines are demanding lower aircraft prices and fuel consumption. Aircraft manufacturers as well as component and sub-assembly manufacturers are adapting to this situation by optimizing existing aircraft configurations. Traditional design processes, due to their inability to capture multidisciplinarity at the early stages of design and to the amount of manual work, do not allow component optimization in the typical time frames of the aircraft industry. Fokker Aerostructures is developing an automated rudder design program, the Rudder Generator, to tackle the limitations of the traditional design method. To effectively capture the multidisciplinarity of aircraft component design, the knowledge of each expertise involved in the design process must be included in the program at the same level of detail. The manufacturing analysis capabilities of the Rudder Generator are significantly lower than the ones of other expertise such as stress, weight or cost.

This thesis focuses on developing a valid methodology to include manufacturing analyses in the rudder conceptual design stage. The developed methodology is created to expand the Rudder Generator capabilities as well as to support the traditional design process. A Knowledge Based Engineering (KBE) application, WelToGen, which generates thermoplastic welding tooling for a given rudder geometry is created. The program runs feasibility checks on the tooling models based on the process requirements and then ensures through design changes the fulfillment of those requirements. The application also measures the manufacturing performance by estimating the tooling cost.

The tool is both integrated in the RG and used as a standalone tool to perform design studies. With WelToGen’s automation it is possible generate a tooling conceptual design, analyze its feasibility and estimate its cost in minutes. The traditional method requires detailed tooling design for the analysis, taking up to weeks to perform the same tasks. Rudder geometries for which tooling has been manufactured at Fokker have been given to WelToGen, which has found new tooling designs that, while also being feasible, are between 3 and 5% cheaper than Fokker’s original tooling designs. Also, parametrical studies on the effect on manufacturing feasibility and performance are executed. WelToGen’s results show influences of rudder and tooling design parameters that were unknown to Fokker engineers before. Additionally, it is found to be feasible to create tooling for rudder configurations which manufacturing had not been considered at Fokker before due to the resources limitations of the traditional design methods. Based on the results, rudder and tooling design recommendations are made.

The implementation of the methodology proves to be effective in improving the conceptual design phase. The developed methodology, compared to the traditional method, has obtained improved rudder and tooling designs, taken a shorter lead-time and led to less risk and missed opportunities. The RG team will integrate the tool and plans on creating new modules adapting the same methodology to other rudder manufacturing and assembly processes, expanding the program’s manufacturing analysis capabilities. Fokker’s tooling engineer will use WelToGen to support the conceptual design stage of tooling design projects currently ongoing at Fokker.

This research is performed as part of the European research project IDEaliSM, in which Delft University of Technology and Fokker Aerostructures are collaborating in the development of a design and optimization framework to support the design of a primary aircraft components.