Cetim was selected to manufacture five composite aircraft window frame demonstrators as part of the Sherloc European project, a project integrated into the Clean Sky 2 programme.
First the car manufac-turing sector and now the aeronautics sector! Within the Sherloc European project (Structural Health Mo-nitoring (SHM), Manufacturing and Repair Technologies for Life Management of Compo-site Fuselage), Cetim proves that it is now possible to make composite parts for the aero-nautics sector at production rates and cost levels that are compatible with series pro-duction.
Manufacturing parts for the tests
Initiated in 2015 and scheduled to end in 2022, the Sherloc project is part of the Clean Sky 2 programme and aims to develop and assess non-destructive testing techniques which will be used to monitor the aging of composite parts of medium-haul aircraft. To that end and as part of a sub project named Sherloc QSP, Cetim was selected in 2017 to design and produce five demonstrators of aircraft window frame, made of PEEK and carbon fibre*, and skin fuse-lage assemblies which will be bench tested during SHM campaigns.“As requested by the Imperial College of London, we optimised the design of these components then we developed the manufacturing process”, explains Thomas Jollivet from Cetim. Therefore, the window frames are produced using Cetim’s high-speed thermo-stamping process, named Quilted Stratum Process (QSP), and bonded to a fuselage skin. The advantage of this process is that it makes it possible to obtain “Net Shape” parts right from the thermostamping step, that is to say without the need for any finishing operation, and the parts made can be instrumented so that material health monitoring can be per-formed during their service life. The production cycle is also considerably faster than that of conventional processes, to the point that making 40,000 parts per year and per production line seems to be possible. The first tests started in 2018. The final parts are scheduled for bench testing before the end of 2019. “If the test results are satisfactory, this will prove that such a process can be used to mass produce composite win-dows, a recurrent part in aircrafts”, says Thomas Jollivet. *PEEK and carbon fibre: material certified for use in aviation applications.
Cetim has the required expertise to design, compute and implement processes to carry out industrial projects which involve composite materials. For production, Cetim relies, in particular, on its Quilted Stratum Process (QSP) platform.
