Project description
Monolithic fuselage barrels that eliminate joints and bolts
Polymer composites are now routinely used in numerous aircraft components to reduce weight, fuel consumption and emissions while imparting properties such as corrosion and fatigue resistance. They have also made it possible to produce monolithic fuselage barrels that eliminate joints and bolts. The European aerospace industry is now targeting a smart, multifunctional thermoplastic composite-based fuselage barrel. To get it off the ground, the EU-funded MASCOT project is developing a multilevel cost analysis software platform to be linked to an optimisation tool. It will consider costs of raw materials, individual components, and the fuselage overall. In addition, it will assess total manufacturing hours and man- or machine-hours. Finally, the software will also account for structural health monitoring costs as well as maintenance and repair.
Objective
The objective of the proposal is to set up a three-level-parameter cost estimation method that allows the determination of the final cost for the fuselage design under analysis.
The tree-structure of the procedure allows a quick, easy and friendly-user inclusion of the main parameters determining the final cost of a fuselage both at the raw material level and at the component level and at the fuselage level.
Level 0 contains information concerning the raw materials (rivet, fastener, composite raw material, honeycomb, gasket, sealant, paint), level 1 collects informations regarding the components (stringer, skin, frame, doublers, floor-beam, pressure bulkhea) and level 2 deals with the fuselage as entire object.
The upper levels are connected to the lower levels by manufacturing routes that are expressed in terms of hours and hour cost (that is man-hours and machine-hours), and in terms of manufacturing technology.
Each of the three levels collects informations and details to estimate the cost. Some of these parameters can be set as cost drivers in order to carry out both the analogous method and the parameter method.
Levels 0 and 1 can collect historical data that will be used by the analogous method.
The entire fuselage is thus defined by filling the three levels and the estimated cost can be computed by one of the methods (Analogous, Parametric o BottomUp).
At level 1 the software will allow the maintenance and repair parameters to be interfaced to the Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) system in order to estimate the SHM technology cost and its cost benefit on manufacturing, maintenance and repair. A Bayesian based Dynamic Data Driven Application System (BDDDSA), developed by the Topic Manager, will be also integrated to the software.
The cost estimation module will be endowed with GUI interface. It will be linked to CAD model to obtain geometrical parameters at each level. The module will also be interfaced to a multidisciplinary optimization tool.
Fields of science
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
CS2-RIA - Research and Innovation actionCoordinator
44121 Ferrara
Italy