Project: ADVANCED SCANNING SYSTEM FOR 3D QUALITY CONTROL INFORMATION LIFE-CYCLE MANAGEMENT IN MASS PRODUCTION OF LARGE COMPONENTS

Advanced Multiresolution and Multisensor Flexible Scanning System for 3D Quality Control Information Life-Cycle Management in Mass Production Environments of Large Composite Components _x000D_ _x000D_ Traditional manufacturing process for composite components are COly handcraft and demand a high accuracy in terms of the quality of the components produced. This has an impact both in terms of costs and delivery time of the components. As the competitiveness demands for the CO industries using nowadays this type of components increases; e.g. aeronautics, the pressure for enhanced automation in the production shopfloor also increases. Moreover, new activity fields are starting to acknowledge the benefits from this kind of material and the renewable energy sector is also investing heavily in this type of materials as part of their more innovative and future component designs._x000D_ _x000D_ As a result, manufacturing of complex 3D parts for aerospace industry using composite materials is creating a strong demand of control systems to characterize the physical aspects of the produced parts. Parts of the wings or the fuselage are manufactured extensively using carbon fibre composites, because their low weight, stiffness and physical behaviour. At the time being and considering that many of these components are critical, material and structural defects are to be inspected at the end of the manufacturing process. As a consequence, techniques like ultrasound or x-ray combined with robotics are normally utilized. Thus, the quality control of the complete life-cycle for composite components is not currently managed and it is one of the major challenges to be undertaken. Nowadays, there is no inspection system capable of supporting the manufacturing process with suitable quality control information in-line. Nowadays it is not possible to provide real-time feedback to the manufacturing process so that modifications can be adequately applied resulting in shorter development cycles - pieces are manufactured with less defects, defects are detected earlier - and with lesser cost to the enterprise - less material and working hours are required to deliver the composite components. _x000D_ _x000D_ 3D surface is an important characteristic to be acquired and analyzed. Inspection of composite parts during the different manufacturing steps is becoming particularly relevant considering that manual processes are being currently replaced by fully automatic methods. A typical case depicted in the Figure below is carbon fiber parts manufactured by lay-up of carbon/epoxy tapes, where automatic CNC machines are automatically positioning the film stripes. Final quality of the product is highly dependent of how the tape is placed, distance between stripes, overlapping distances, etc. _x000D_ _x000D_ _x000D_ The automation of this manufacturing process poses interesting challenges to quality control systems, namely:_x000D_ - Inspection systems will need to be sufficiently fast and automatic._x000D_ - Inspection systems will need to operate on very large pieces and detect very small defects (0,5mm precision over pieces larger than 1,5m)_x000D_ - Inspection systems will need to be flexible to adapt to the different pieces geometries._x000D_ - Inspection systems will need to be able to operate over large distance with sufficient accuracy._x000D_ - Inspection systems will have to work with non cooperative surfaces._x000D_ - Large information volume acquired through multiple advanced sensors will have to be processed, fused, organised and stored so that it can be used both on-line and off-line, at any stage of the product life-cycle where it is requested._x000D_ - Users of the control systems will have to deal with comprehensive information in easy to use manners.._x000D_ To meet this clear industry demand new R&D activities need to be initiated with the goal to develop a multisensor and multiresolution scanning system for surface inspection of complex 3D composite materials, and provide an information system capable of managing the information obtained during the life cycle of the parts. _x000D_ _x000D_ _x000D_ _x000D_ _x000D_ _x000D_ _x000D_ _x000D_ _x000D_

Acronym	CORVUS (Reference Number: 4339)
Duration	01/07/2008 - 01/12/2010
Project Topic	Different innovative components will be developed in order to reach the automation of this manufacturing process: Multiresolution and multisensor scanning systems; a Virtual Part quality control information system; Data fusion and geometrical/non-geometrical feature extraction methods.
Project Results (after finalisation)	The CO results of the project have been the development of:_x000D_- New cartesian robotics for large volume parts_x000D_- New optical devices for high speed scanning and 3D surface characterization_x000D_- New high speed techniques using vision cameras for surfaces screenings and defect detection_x000D_- Virtual Part representation and VPX standard_x000D_- Advanced Human-Machine interface
Network	Eurostars
Call	Eurostars Cut-Off 1

Project partner

Number	Name	Role	Country
3	DATAPIXEL, S.L.	Partner	Spain
3	i2S	Partner	France
3	TRIMEK, S.A.	Coordinator	Spain