Simulation of an Aeronautical Product Assembly Process Driven by a Metrology Aided Virtual Approach

Major aircraft manufacturers are expecting the commercial aircraft market to overcome the pre-COVID levels by 2025, which demands an increase in the production rate. However, aeronautical product assembly processes are still mainly manually performed with a low level of automation. Moreover, the current industry digitalization trend offers the possibility to develop faster, smarter and more flexible manufacturing processes, aiming at a higher production rate and product customization. Here, the integration of metrology within the manufacturing processes offers the possibility to supply reliable data to constantly adjust the assembly process parameters aiming at zero-defect, more digital and a higher level of automation manufacturing processes. In this context, this article introduces the virtual metrology as an assistant of the assembly process of the Advanced Rear-End fuselage component. It describes how the assembly process CAD model is used by simulation tools to design, set up and perform the virtual commissioning of the new metrology-driven assembly methods, moving from a dedicated tooling approach to a more flexible and reconfigurable metrology-aided design. Preliminary results show that portable metrology solutions are fit-to-purpose even for hardly accessible geometries and fulfil the current accuracy demands. Moreover, the simulation environment ensures a user-friendly assembly process interaction providing further set-up time reduction.