Riveting is the defacto method for the assembly of aluminium aerostructures, with large commercial aircraft fuselages typically containing 100’000s of rivets. However, riveting is known as a time-consuming, expensive and weight-adding operation. From a design perspective, it also places holes and point loads in a cyclically pressurised structure, subject to long-term fatigue loading and corrosion. Thus is not an ideal solution for these types of structures. With developments in precision laser beam welding (LBW) and friction stir welding (FSW), it is now possible to fabricate “rivetless” aluminium aerostructures using welding processes. These new processes produce a lighter weight, distributed load path with the potential for enhanced strength and structural stiffness, ‘no holes’ and a smoother (more aerodynamic) surface. In addition to being more structurally efficient, the new processes are cheaper and reduce inspection & maintenance requirements. The OASIS project will establish and demonstrate the cost-effectiveness of manufacturing aluminium aircraft structures using the latest developments in LBW and FSW (with appropriate inspection to aerospace standards). The project is led by TWI, who are leaders in both LBW and FSW techniques. Together with 6 other European organisations, we will design, demonstrate and evaluate the suitability of a range of process variants in creating optimised aluminium aircraft structures, including appropriateness for emerging alloys (e.g. 3rd generation Al-Li, 2nd gen Scalmalloy®). ESAB who will offer a commercial route for adoption of suitable processes; as suppliers of both LBW and FSW solutions to the European aerospace supply-chain (and who hold unique FSW IP). The impact of OASIS will ultimately allow improved design and manufacture of lighter-weight aluminium aircraft structures. This will contribute to the flightpath 2050 goals of reduced fuel burn, superior operating efficiencies and reduced emissions.

FITCoW addresses directly the challenges of AIRFRAME ITD - Reduce aviation environmental footprint through product performance improvements (drag, weight, versatility) and an eco-friendly life cycle including significant recyclability increase as well as optimized material streams applied to the category of 19-pax commuter aircraft. The global objectives presented for the CS2 program are particularized to this project as a reduction in the carbon dioxide emissions of the developed product and associated lifecycle and an increase in the EU competitiveness. FITCoW aims to implement tools that can reduce the recurring costs of low-volume production and, with this, benefit reducing carbon emissions through three different manners: in the manufacturing of the tooling itself as part of the project in comparison of tooling currently used, in the operation of the tooling in the manufacturing of the final aeronautical structures and in the operation of the manufactured aeronautical structures through the developed tooling.

The challenge in rotorcraft design is always to improve payload-lifting capability, reduce fuel burn and increase the vehicle's range – the traditional objectives in aeronautical design. The Fast Rotorcraft IADP of Clean Sky 2 consists of two flight demonstrators, the Next Generation Civil TiltRotor (NGCTR) [leader: Leonardo Helicopters] and the RACER compound helicopter [leader: Airbus Helicopters]. These two fast rotorcraft concepts aim to deliver superior vehicle productivity and performance, and through this economic advantage to users. NGCTR aims to design, build and fly an innovative next generation civil tiltrotor technology demonstrator. The configuration will go beyond current architectures of this type of aircraft and will involve tilting proprotors mounted in fixed nacelles at the tips of the wing. The wing will have a fixed inboard portion and a tilting outboard portion to minimize rotor downwash impingement in hover and increase efficiency. Demonstration activities will aim at validating the technologies/systems and operational concepts. The RACER (formerly LifeRCraft) aims at developing and flight-testing in 2020-2023 a full scale flightworthy demonstrator, which embodies the new European compound rotorcraft architecture. This architecture combines a lifting rotor with two lateral rotors at the tips of box-wings, in pusher configuration. This proposal presents the work plan 2020-2021 toward the achievement of the FRC IADP final objectives.

Traditional manufacturing systems lack the necessary flexibility and reconfigurability that can allow short production cycles and fast deployment of the updated system. Although the use of automation technologies based on industrial robots can increase the adaptability of a production line, the desired flexibility cannot be achieved until abilities for genuine collaboration of the robots with the human workers are developed. CoLLaboratE will revolutionize the way industrial robots learn to cooperate with human workers for performing new manufacturing tasks, with a special focus on the challenging area of assembly operations. The envisioned system for collaborative assembly will be capable of allocating human and robotic resources for executing the production plan sharing the tasks according to the capabilities of the available actors. The CoLLaboratE project will build upon state-of-the-art methods for teaching the robot assembly tasks using human demonstration, extending them to facilitate genuine human-robot collaboration. To this end, a framework for equipping the robots and AGV mobile platforms with basic collaboration skills, such as load sharing, human touch recognition and human intention detection, will also be developed, coupled with deep reinforcement learning algorithms for increasing adaptability. Special attention will be paid to providing effective safety strategies allowing the use of a fenceless approach within the production cell. As a result, closer collaboration will be achievable and efficient production plans making optimal use of the available resources will be designed and executed. The proposed solution will be evaluated in four different pilot sites, which will be implemented as collaborative factory floors of the industrial partners in Italy, Slovenia, Turkey, and Romania.

The challenge in rotorcraft design is always to improve payload-lifting capability, reduce fuel burn and increase the vehicle's range – the traditional objectives in aeronautical design.