Simulation-based investigation of the feasibility of robotic machining of on-wing engine components

Foreign object damage on the compressor blades of a turbofan engine reduces engine efficiency and compromises safety. This necessitates to repair such defects as soon as possible. As it is time-consuming and costly to disassemble the entire engine to access the compressor blades, it can be advantageous to perform such repairs on-wing, while the engine is still assembled. The main challenge in machining compressor blades on-wing is the limited accessibility within the engine, which precludes the use of traditional machining tools and demands the development of new solutions. To address these obstacles, this work proposes a flexible simulation framework including a shape optimization technique to aid in the development of suitable robotic kinematics for space-constrained machining tasks. Further simulation functionalities such as an interactive mounting simulation foster detailed feasibility studies of kinematic concepts.

Subjects

Simulation

Robotic machining

On-wing

MRO

Foreign object damage

DDC Class

629.13: Aviation Engineering

629.892: Robot

Lizenz

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Publication version

publishedVersion

Name

978-3-031-91463-8_30.pdf

Type

Main Article

Size

1.49 MB

Format

Adobe PDF

Options

Simulation-based investigation of the feasibility of robotic machining of on-wing engine components