AgaPolCo - Aggregated Polygon forming based processes for large fuselage components

There is a high demand in the aerospace industry for alternative manufacturing methods that are cost efficient, faster and more environmentally friendly than the current state. With Deharde Polygon Forming® (DPF), such an alternative exists for the forming of aircraft fuselage components, which were previously formed by roll forming or stretch forming. In DPF, sheets of cold-formable materials, such as aluminium, steel or titanium, are incrementally free-bent with high precision in terms of large radii, which already have all desired geometric shapes, such as different sheet thicknesses, recesses, pockets or holes before forming. However, the DPF has so far been limited to linear bending lines and relatively simple geometries. Now the process is to be transferred in particular to complex structures that require slightly spherical and also precisely manufactured sheet metals. These are fuselage components with connections to the cockpit and rear section. According to that, an aim is to deepen the understanding of the process by means of numerical modelling. The simulation of incremental processes consists of a large number of simulations for the individual strokes and is hence very time-consuming. Therefore, metamodels with short feedback times are developed. The models are trained with data from validated FE simulations. Thus, tasks such as process design and development can be shortened and process monitoring is enabled.

The overall intention of the research project is to modify the process chains in such a way that complete sheet metal processing and assembly preparation with machining, surface protection, local stiffening elements or even the prefabrication of sandwich layers by combining them before forming takes place as the final step. This leads to a simplification and acceleration of the overall process of fuselage components and thus results in a significant cost reduction, which also has a positive effect on the assembly of individual components. To achieve the overarching aim, a digital twin of the process chain is to be set up and used to support decision-making in the automation of the process chain.