Gap volume prediction for aircraft wing assembly

In this work, two methods for predictive shimming based on laser scan technology and point cloud processing software have been presented. The first one is direct measurement method in PolyWorks, and the second one is feature-based modelling method in SolidWorks. Firstly, both component-level and assembly-level scans are collected by a laser scanner. Then, the point clouds are post-processed and registered in PolyWorks. Thirdly, gap information (shape and thickness) is obtained either in PolyWorks or in SolidWorks. Results show that the proposed methods can obtain gap information successfully based on current hardware and software.