- Start: 21/01/2021
- End: 20/07/2023
The main objective of the WELDER project is to design, develop and deploy two robot-based, modular, flexible (Plug-and-Produce) and fully operative welding solutions (namely, ultrasonic welding and resistance welding end-effectors), including all the needed tooling and auxiliaries for performing the longitudinal barrel joint of the 8 m long fuselage at the Multi-Functional Fuselage Demonstrator.
Moreover, WELDER will be focused on implementing an online monitoring and control system based on an end-to-end digital manufacturing solution, which will stablish a bidirectional dataflow to feed the whole lifecycle management digital twin and, thus, optimising the process and product performance while enabling new approval/acceptance procedures. Therefore, the successful execution of the WELDER project will become the spearhead of the aerospace industry thermoplastic adoption strategy through the provision and demonstration of the airplane fuselage welding replacing conventional joining systems that currently relies on fastening, riveting and adhesives, thus highly improving the environmental and economic performance of the aerospace sector, according to CS2 objectives.
The following results will also be achieved at the end of the project:
- Design, develop and deploy at TL´s facilities two welding robots (ultrasonic and resistance welding).
- Integrating new welding equipment (ultrasonic and resistance) on existing end-users´ facilities, regarding equipment set-up, tooling and auxiliary's integration.
- Frame coupling designs validation and an optimised manufacturing process based on the resistance metal mesh embedding within the frame coupling.
- Inline monitoring and control digital pipeline in view to directly feeding into the demonstrators Product Lifecycle Management Digital Twin within 3D experience.
- Implementing an online monitoring and control system based on an end-to-end digital manufacturing solution, which will stablish a bidirectional dataflow to feed the whole lifecycle management digital twin and, thus, optimising the process and product performance while enabling new approval/ acceptance procedures
- Equipment and process optimisation based on real-process data gathering and feeding into the simulation and design tools.
* AIMEN´s role in the project:
- Welding parameter window development and optimization for the longitudinal joint (ultrasonic welding) and frame couplings (resistance welding), based on experimental results and mechanical and chemical characterization at coupon level.
- De-risking welding trials for head development.
- Provide their experience for end-effector designs and head validation.
- Welding part tests at MCA level.
- Automatic welding quality assessment based on monitored data.
- Data interoperability between different stages of welding processes.
- Common information model for welding technologies based on Industry 4.0 standards to develop digital twins
- Definition of data formats for interoperability across engineering workflow. Infrastructure for data integration and controlled sharing for inline control.
- Hardware architecture and processing platform for inline monitoring of a set of parameters to extract welding quality by detecting out of range values and thus identifying the origin of defects.
- On-line process monitoring and further improvements.
- Quality assurance.
- Middleware software development to horizontal integration of production workflow.
AIMEN will be leading the WP5 Process performance verification and analysis and WP7 Technology de-risking testing and simulation trials. AIMEN will be responsible of 12 out of 31 tasks of different workpackages.
- Sectors: Aeronautical
- Financing programme: CLEAN SKY 2
- R&D&i: Advanced assembly and disassembly technology, Flexible manufacturing cells, Mass customization, Materials under extreme conditions, Multimaterial systems, Thermoplastic composites
- Leader: CT Ingenieros
- Partners: AIMEN Centro Tecnológico, Aitiip Centro Tecnológico, DUKANE IAS
- Acronym: WELDER
- Ambit: International
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