KEPLER – Cost-efficient production of fuselage structures for environmentally friendly, regional aviation

Challenge: Cost and time expenditure in aircraft production

The production of conventional small aircraft involves a great deal of manual labour. This leads to comparatively high production costs that are often not competitive. The KEPLER project is developing an innovative manufacturing concept that utilises processes such as winding or laying to produce the fuselage more efficiently.

Goals: Reduce costs, increase quality

The use of robot-based production techniques should significantly reduce manual production effort. This makes it possible:

• Cost reduction: Production costs are to be reduced by up to 80 %.
• Increased quality: Process accuracy and product quality are increased through precise automation.
• Weight reduction: An optimised structure and carefully selected materials enable a weight reduction of 10 %.

Future-proof production: certifiability and quality assurance

For later certification, the project is developing inline-capable measurement concepts to monitor the manufacturing quality directly in the production process. In addition, digital interfaces between the process steps (e.g. CAD-CAM chain) are being analysed. The demonstrator is comprehensively measured using robot-based, non-destructive testing methods in order to analyse possible manufacturing deviations and their effects on component quality.

Cooperation and promotion