Automated handling and positioning of large dry carbon fibre cut-pieces with cooperating robots in rear pressure bulkhead production

Kurzfassung

For new generation long-haul aircrafts the rear pressure bulkhead is made of carbon fibre reinforced plastics. The production process is usually realised by a manually performed dry fibre preforming process followed by a vacuum assisted resin infusion. The preforming process is laborious, complex and for the workers non-ergonomic due to the handling of large cut-pieces with high positioning accuracy requirements. In order to fulfil the increasing production rates, this process has to be enhanced. For this reason the German Aerospace Centre in Augsburg develops an automated preforming process using a female tooling of the pressure bulkhead. This paper presents first investigations to handle large cut-pieces of the rear pressure bulkhead plybook by cooperating robots. The grippers used in this process are passive adjustable. They consist of five elements which are connected by ball-joints. Due to these ball-joints the geometry can be adapted to different shapes. The main objective is an investigation of suitable gripper movements in order to pick-up the cutpieces from a table by draping it, transport and place it with high lay-up accuracy in the pressure bulkhead tooling. In total four different pick-up strategies are investigated to figure out which one is suitable to handle the cut-pieces without wrinkles, folds and bridging. The best strategy is optimised and used for lay-up tests where the same requirements obtain as for the pick-up movement. In conclusion the used gripper system can ensure a material handling without damage. Consequently it is possible to realise the preforming process with the passive and less complex gripper system. This may result in a more reliable and cost-effective process.