The manufacturing of a full-scale rear fuselage section, through the automated fiber placement process of pre-impregnated carbon fiber, was the theme of the presentation by the researcher Wellington Lombardo of Nunes Mello, from the IPT Lightweight Structures Laboratory, and the engineer Erich Robert Schaay, from Embraer, on the second day of the 2nd Sampe Brazil Advanced Composites Week, which takes place at the Technology Park of São José dos Campos and IPT until October 6.
The work is related to a project executed with the support of Embrapii, a funding agency from Brazil, with a technology readiness level of 5, involving design, manufacturing and assembly of the rear fuselage section of a small civil jet.
Rear fuselage and the Automatic Fiber Placement machine
The focus of the work was on the skin and stringers of the fuselage, which were made of carbon-fiber composites.
Several design and manufacturing alternatives were evaluated in order to ascertain the effectiveness of the global production process. As a final step, a specific area of the fuselage skin was chosen in order to perform structural tests in representative panels.
IPT had two researchers, one technician full-time employed in this project and others partially involved. “It was a great learning experience, from a technical point of view, as well as by the intense cooperation with the Embraer team,” says Mello.
