An Integrated Approach to the Conceptual Development of Aircraft Structures Focusing on Manufacturing Simulation and Cost.

Abstract

In an increasingly competitive market place manufacturers in the aerospace industry need to improve the efficiency of their product development methods. With fewer new aircraft being developed, innovation needs to switch from product to process technologies such as design, development and manufacturing planning in order to improve efficiency and reduce cost. This paper describes a product development methodology based on automatically generated CAD data which can be used for the structural analyses of and manufacturing planning for, aircraft fuselage sections. The introduction of manufacturability into the design arena makes concurrent engineering design, manufacturing planning and process validation possible before committing to the costly activities of making prototypes and tooling. Network analyses carried out on simulated assembly operations for a regional jet fuselage section, shows that labour utilization can be significantly improved when compared to a real assembly process with a 19% improvement in financial efficiency. The simulation predicts that these results can be achieved with a single final assembly jig. As two jigs are currently used for this assembly operation in reality this result represents a significant financial saving.