Report
Teaser, summary, work performed and final results
Periodic Reporting for period 1 - AFPMeT (Automatic Fiber Placement Metitalia Tooling)
Teaser
The objective of this proposal is to develop, design, manufacture and deliver to the Topic Manager facilities suitable tooling’s to perform AFP (Automatic Fiber Placement) lamination and cure of complex sandwich part of the side structure of an innovative helicopter.Several...
Summary
The objective of this proposal is to develop, design, manufacture and deliver to the Topic Manager facilities suitable tooling’s to perform AFP (Automatic Fiber Placement) lamination and cure of complex sandwich part of the side structure of an innovative helicopter.
Several the tool material and configurations options heve been evaluated and will be evaluated performing selection based on key requirements like:
-Low energy consumption in tool and part fabrication
-Use wherever possible of green or recycled materials (like Recovered Uncured Prepreg Scrapes)
-Possible reuse of tool material/component
The importance for Metitalia and for OMPM companies is a great opportunity to implement an innovative production:
-Unusual architecture of the aircraft (rotorcraft with a specific architecture)
-Optimized tooling for AFP lamination of complex shape
-Development of thermal modelling to predict and compensate part deformation like Warpage and shrinkage
More in details, the proposal has the objective to design, fabricate and delivery the following tools,
to support the fabrication of side sandwich panels:
-4 AFP lamination and cure tool
-4 AFP inner skin lamination
-Wet inner skin handling device (tbc)
-4 Template set for HC/cutting, splicing (if any) and positioning
-4 template for panels trimming and index holes drilling
Work performed
Work has been performed according to the WP of the approved project.
In more detail: Milestone M1 “Kick off Meeting “was held according to plan
• WP1, Tooling concept development, was completed successfully with a delay mostly due to the need of coordination with cure tool ( not included in AFPMET project) by the additional effort due to the coordination with the curing moulds and some related technical difficulties. Milestone M1, the Kick off Meeting, was held as planned. Milestone M2, the preliminary design review (PDR), was passed in October 2018.
• WP2, Layup and auxiliary tool design, is partly completed. Milestone M3, the critical design review (CDR), was passed in January 2019. The delay in completion of WP1 caused the equivalent delay in WP2 .
• WP3, Tool fabrication, delivery and quality check, was started. The casting of the first raw tool was examined in February 2019.All other component of RH tool are in order, while tools and components for LH side are in order.
Final results
AFPMET main progress beyond state of art : 1- an innovative process to transfer uncured sandwich structure from Fiber Placement lamination tool to cure tool has been envisaged , demonstrated at subscale level and after approval from Topic manager implemented on full scale tool
2- Aluminum Lost foam casting applied on a big complex lamination tool demonstrated feasibility with good result in terms of no vacuum leakage and reduced warpage of raw casting
Website & more info
More info: http://www.ompm.it.