The aeronautical sector through Clean Sky 2 Work Programme aims at contributing to one of the key Societal Challenge ‘smart, green and integrated transport’ defined in Horizon 2020, enabling cutting edge solutions to decrease the environmental impact of the sector and to achieve the ACARE goals, facilitating the first steps to the Flightpath 2050 targets (75% of CO2, 90% of NOx, 65% noise reduction); also improving the mobility within the EU.
Clean Sky 2 affords the development of different Integrated Technology Demonstrators to advance towards the mentioned objectives. The AIRFRAME ITD is devoted to the develop and validate technologies that affect the global vehicle level on energy and environmental efficiency, industrial leadership and enhanced mobility; through a strong progress on the airframe to fulfil market requirements and contribution to growth. It focuses on the development of 9 major technology streams to advance with the main objectives of the Clean Sky 2 programme, including that related to Advanced Fuselage. The program is structured in 3 activity lines, being RECYCOMP project within the activity Line 2, devoted to the demonstration of airframe technologies focused toward High Versatility and Cost Efficiency (HVE) and to technology demonstrations on reference aircraft operating at lower speed and lower altitude flight conditions, with shorter range, and turbo-propeller power plant. In this sense, the Advanced Fuselage within the WP B-4.3 “More Affordable composite fuselage” aims at introducing innovation in fuselages thought the cost effectiveness (manufacturing & assembly) and environmental footprint reduction, especially for the manufacturing of wing and its subcomponents.
The use of composite materials provides suitable components according to weight and design flexibility but faces some challenges in the area of manufacturing and assembly with the need of special processes, hand operations and large lead time. The automation of the manufacturing of composite material, with processes like Automated Tape Laying (ATL) and Automated Fibre Placement (AFP), allows the improvement of the manufacturing lead time and product quality; but, on the other hand, the processes produce significant quantities of unused scrap material after cutting the Carbon Fibre (CF) pre-impregnated materials during lamination.
The RECYCOMP project is focused on the reutilization of uncured scrap material, aiming at preparing it for a subsequent reuse for the manufacturing of functional components. The main activity focuses on the development of an equipment able to recover the uncured scraps, avoiding the degradation (associated to undesired curing) and preparing the material in a suitable form for the generation of new pre-impregnated material useful for the lamination process of new components.
The RECYCOMP equipment has involved the use of a combination of technologies to achieve the main objective, and it includes 3 main modules: to identify the scraps area and fibre orientation; to cut the scrap in rectangular chips; and to pick and place the chips in a new backing material for the subsequent use.
Keywords: CFRP, Recycling, PrePreg, Machine vision, robot, pick-place, cutting
