Computer Aided Process Planning in Aircraft Manufacturing

Abstract

Aircraft structural parts make around 1% of the total aircraft components. At present, the production cycle of several components families is within the range of few hours. Conversely, the production of structural parts is mainly a human-made operation with manufacturing complexity increasing with the part's morphology. The delicate thin elements and the presence of complex surfaces – mainly ruled surfaces which acquires the external aircraft body shape – sets the production time of mechanical structural parts ranging from few hours (for basic parts) up to over 20 days (for complex parts). The main loss of time is identified in the process planning field. This paper presents at first a review of the production numerical chain, and then offers a review of existing CAPP software and their points of failures. We follow with the presentation of the USIQUICK project and the resulting CAPP software functions and prototype. We conclude the paper with a review of the main results setting the domain of our current and future research.