UPSCALING RESISTANCE WELDING – JOINING OF CARBON FIBER COMPOSITES FOR FULL-SCALE AEROSPACE COMPONENTS

Abstract

As thermoplastic composites become increasingly popular in the aerospace industry, suitable joining technologies must be selected to exploit their potential in assembly processes. Various welding technologies such as electrical resistance-, ultrasonic- or induction welding are currently in focus to prove their capabilities for joining aircraft primary structures. At the German Aerospace Center, Institute of Structures and Design (DLR-BT), different thermoplastic welding technologies are ongoing developed and scaled up from sample- to full-scale demonstrator size. This study was carried out in a cooperation project together with our industrial partner Premium AEROTEC and investigates the basic issues of electrical resistance welding and its additional challenges of upscaling the static resistance welding process. The differences in process control using different welding elements as well as at increasing weld lengths and their effect on consolidation will be furthermore discussed.