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Clamping force model application on the aircraft structural assembly

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Abstract 

The aeronautic manufacturing industry has been seeking to enhance competitiveness and product quality by applying the Industry 4.0’s technologies. Particularly, on the roadmap of the digital twin era, a way to achieve a reduction in manufacturing time and thus production cost is to obtain prediction models of the main elementary assembly operations and functions within aircraft manufacturing process, such as the clamping force applied by the temporary fasteners on the aircraft’s structural parts. Besides being a mandatory operation, it affects multiple tasks along the product’s assembly lifecycle. This work focuses on the role of the clamping force in the assembly process, establishing its functional model by means of an experimental approach based upon resources used on a real shop floor of a major aircraft manufacturer. To evince the main requirements that the clamping force tools can achieve, this work employs the Taguchi Design method, design of experiments, and process capability analysis. The model resulted from the aforementioned methods and tools allows the assembly behavior prediction and thus the control of the manufacturing process, ultimately yielding a better geometry quality.

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Data availability

All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article.

Code availability

The code generated to analyze the data and create the model was attached on the submission.

Abbreviations

ANOVA:

Analysis of variance

CFA:

Control factor

Cp:

Process capability ratio

Cpk:

Process capability ratio that considers the process centering

DOE:

Design of experiment

FEA:

Finite element analysis

NFA:

Noise factor

LSL:

Lower specification limits

PM:

Performance measurements

S/N:

Signal-to-noise ratio

SPE:

Speed rotation (RPM)

TEMP1:

Low-temperature range in °C

TEMP2:

High-temperature range in °C

TF:

Temporary fasteners

TOR:

Torque (Nm)

TPM:

Total productive maintenance

USL:

Upper specification limits

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Embraer S.A, São José dos Campos, Brazil

    Joao Marcos Gomes de Mello

  2. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Aeronautics Institute of Technology, São José dos Campos, Brazil

    Joao Marcos Gomes de Mello, Luís Gonzaga Trabasso, André Vinícius Santos Silva & Wesley Rodrigues de Oliveira

  3. SENAI Innovation Institute for Manufacturing Systems and Laser Processing, Joinville, Brazil

    Luís Gonzaga Trabasso

Authors
  1. Joao Marcos Gomes de Mello
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  2. Luís Gonzaga Trabasso
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  3. André Vinícius Santos Silva
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  4. Wesley Rodrigues de Oliveira
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Contributions

All authors (J. M., L. T., A. S., and W. O) contributed to the research proposal, design, and execution. Material preparation, data collection, and analysis were performed by J. M. The first draft of the manuscript was written by J. M. and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Joao Marcos Gomes de Mello.

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de Mello, J.M.G., Trabasso, L.G., Silva, A.V.S. et al. Clamping force model application on the aircraft structural assembly. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 124, 1951–1969 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-022-10555-y

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