Automated Fibre Placement Technologies for Glass Fibre Prepreg layup in FML Components

Kurzfassung

The use of fiber-metal laminates made of glass-fiber-reinforced plastic and aluminum allows substantial advantages over a fuselage skin made of monolithic aluminum materials due to low fatigue, high load tolerance and resistance to residual stress. This material has already been used in the wide body aircraft of the Airbus Group A380 on the upper fuselage shells. However, this is not enough: due to the further development of the used materials and the construction methods, very thin FML with a 50% lower skin thickness will be able to be realized in the future compared to the state of the art in the Airbus A380. In addition to the above-mentioned advantages, this also results in a weight reduction and makes this material interesting for next generation aircrafts. A new process chain for the automated fuselage shell manufacturing of these thin FML components is the focus of DLR's research work, especially with respect to scale 1: 1. This presentation compares the glass prepreg layup with the Automated Tape Laying Technology (ATL) and The Automated Fiber Placement Technology (AFP) and shows that especially highly curved components can be laid up with the appropriate technology and through the correct setting of the process parameters.