Forming advanced aerospace panels at reduced cost

A European project supported within the fifth Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development
 Introduction

Ageform is a European project supported within the fifth Framework Programme, for Research and
Technological Development.

Motivation
The European consortium behind the Ageform project have driven forward a manufacturing technique that has the
potential to reduce cost and improve product quality in the aerospace industry, as well as to facilitate weight savings
in airframe structures. The important advantages of the ageform process, investigated in this project, include :

• The ability to form complex fuselage and wing structures
with reduced process steps, cost reduction, increased
repeatability, and a reduction in lead time,
• The replacement of labour intensive traditional assembly
methods, like stretch forming and shot peening, by a safer
and a lower environmental impact technology,
• The ability to be integrated with the manufacturing
requirements of a new generation of artificially aged, higher
strength, damage tolerant alloys,
• The ability to form integral high speed machined and
welded structures, while reducing residual stress and
distortion.

The Process
The main principle of ageforming is to combine panel
forming and artificial ageing treatments, which are
necessary for achieving the final properties of heat treatable
alloys, into a single process. In ageforming the panel is held
with pressure against a tool for the duration of the ageing
treatment. The pressure on the panel can be applied using an
autoclave, or mechanically. Once the thermal cycle, required
for the metallurgical hardening of the alloy, is finished, the
panel is unloaded. While hot under pressure, the material
creeps to adopt its new shape. Sophisticated thermo-
mechanical models, containing creep laws for the alloy used,
allow elastic springback to be accurately predicted, so that
the tooling can be precisely designed and high reproducibility
can be obtained.

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Sample loading
fuselage panel forming tool (Alenia)

bagging technique mechanical clamping

autoclave «usual furnace»

Current State of the Art
Manufacturing in the aircraft industry is currently mainly reliant on traditional and highly labour intensive methods, including
joining with fasteners, and ‘black art’ forming techniques, like manual peen forming and stretch and press forming. Prior
to the Ageform project, ageforming was only applied to a few components with mainly high strength requirements, such as
the Airbus A340, A380 and the Dassault Falcon 7X top wing skins, for example.

Despite its obvious advantages, the age forming process cannot at present be used for many aircraft applications, as they
require high damage tolerance. For damage tolerant dominated areas, like the bottom wing skin and for fuselage
structures, currently 2000 series alloys (e.g. 2024A) with, so-called T3, or naturally aged tempers, are mainly used.
With these alloys the desired properties cannot be obtained with a thermal cycle suitable for developing the creep strain
required by the ageform process. In order to use the ageform process for such structures, damage tolerant alloys with
artificial aged tempers had to be developed. An example alloy studied in the project is 2022, which satisfies this need, but
with an improved strength – damage tolerance balance.

Of equal importance was to explore the potential for using the Ageform process to facilitate the introduction of other
new manufacturing methods, aimed at reducing the high cost of handling many components and traditional joining by
riveting, such as the automated laser and friction stir welding of integral structures.

Project Partners
Project Management

The Ageform consortium is composed of 6 complementary partners from 4 European Definition of the final part requirements,
countries. design and manufacture of tooling

Alcan, developed the new optimised higher strength damage tolerant ageformable
alloys that were investigated in the project. As an academic partner, The University of
Manchester, School of Materials, focused research on understanding the metallurgical Forming of
Integral Metallurgical
Material
interactions in the ageforming process. The aircraft manufacturers optimised the structures
(extruded
Development understanding
and principles
ageforming technique for their specific applications, building full scale demonstrators in and welded)

the process, including: integral machined wing skin panels (Dassault Aviation), large
complex variable section wing skin panels (Airbus UK), space structures (Sabca), and
welded integral structural elements for fuselages (Alenia). Demonstration and validation

Summary
cost

The Ageform project was far more successful than originally anticipated. It showed conclusively
that ageforming can be used to produce cost effective advanced metallic aerospace
structures, via more automated manufacturing.

The process was found to be viable for forming panels of locally varying geometry into complex
aerodynamic profiles, with higher reproducibility compared to traditional techniques, as well
as for forming pre-machined and welded integral structures. Up to 20% cost savings were
Standard processing cost, REFERENCE
demonstrated. As illustrated in the right figure, this resulted from the synergistic advantages
of combining the Ageform process with other advanced manufacturing methods and new Age formed profiled skin panel
materials, allowing the automated assembly, or machining of components prior to forming, as Age formed integrated stiffened skin panel
well as the introduction of higher strength damage tolerant alloys. The elimination of fastened
joints and improved property performance also has the potential to facilitate weight savings in Low cost automated forming, illustration of
airframe design. cost reduction compared to current baseline.
Project Outcomes – Technological

Airbus UK
Complex geometry bottom wing skin demonstrator
Airbus UK specialises in designing and building highly efficient wings for the entire
Airbus range of large commercial aircraft. Their demonstrator programme was
tailored to investigate the feasibility of producing subtle aerodynamically profiled
bottom wing skins, in new high performance damage tolerant alloys, when the
skin contains substantial local section thickness variations, to maximise weight
saving, and to accommodate features such as manhole access panels. A typical
inboard wing panel was selected for this purpose. Using computer modeling, it
was found that tool geometries could be designed to successfully achieve the
correct shape in these difficult components with the ageform process and the
new alloys proposed.

Alcan
Comparison of stress relaxation of all materials
Strength-toughness balance
Damage tolerance :
Kapp(L-T) in MPa/m
160
In the course of the programme, Alcan proposed a range of alloy –
temper combinations aimed at addressing the problem of selecting a 150

damage tolerant alloy that could be artificially aged, and thus allowing 140

the application of the ageform technique, while maintaining acceptable 130

baseline : 2024 T3
forming characteristics. Several solutions emerged that showed great 120
2022 T8
2139 T8
promise. The development of new ageformable alloy solutions
110
also led to a step increase in the strength and the damage 350 370 390 410 430 450
tolerance balance that could be achieved. In the right figure promising
strength : TYS (L) in MPa

ageformable materials like the 2022 T8 or 2139 T8 alloy, illustrate High strength/high damage
the improved strength-toughness combination that can be obtained tolerant metallic materials,
ageformable Aluminium alloys
compared to the 2024 T3 baseline.

Alenia
Ageformed welded integral fuselage panels
a

For fuselage construction Alenia looked at a radical new approach to manufacturing, aimed
at replacing the slow and labour intensive traditional method of roll forming a curved skin,
jigging, hole drilling, and riveting on extruded stiffeners. This involved : b

1. Joining by friction stir welding the machined flat panels to form larger sections (fig.a).
2. Fitting up and jigging the stringers onto skin sheets while still flat.
3. Robotic Laser welding the stringers to the skins (fig.b).
4. Autoclave ageforming the integral panels to match the desired fuselage radius (fig.c).
5. Final demonstrator of full scale fuselage panel (fig.d). c

Using this approach, far more automation could be introduced, as well as a reduction in
problems, such as poor stringer skin fit-up. It was also found that there were synergistic
benefits. Being able to weld flat panels greatly simplified jigging requirements and the
post welding ageforming cycle removed distortion and reduced residual stresses induced d
by welding. Cost benefit studies showed that savings up to 20% could be made using
this approach. This programme also clearly demonstrated the advantages of using new
artificially aged higher strength damage tolerant alloys, which save weight and have
much greater weldability than traditional materials.
Demonstrators

Dassault Aviation
Integral machined bottom wing skin demonstrator
Dassault Aviation focused on exploiting ageforming to reduce the manufacturing steps
involved in the production of bottom wing skin panels for business jets. This involved
high speed machining integral skin-stiffener panels from thick section plates in new
artificially ageable damage tolerant materials and ageforming the aerodynamic wing
surface shape using a mechanical forming tool, which can exert a higher pressure than
an autoclave. This approach allowed high local strains to be achieved in critical areas
such as “the wing break” where there is a crease in the wing skin. Again, the adoption
of new higher performance alloys, and a reduction in part count and the number of
manufacturing and finishing steps, was shown to lead to both savings in weight and
substantial cost reduction.

Sabca Ageformed skin panels for space structures

Sabca build booster components for the Ariane launchers, as well as subassemblies for
different types of Airbus aircraft. Their interest in the project was to study the applicability
of the ageform technology to conical panels, containing many features, such as ac-
cess holes, integral stiffeners, and skin thickness variations for weight saving. It has been
demonstrated that the ageforming process is feasible with some complex machined skin
panels, for space applications, and with enough refinement of models to predict the tool
surface the external shape could be achieved within the required tolerances. This
study has shown that the ageforming process could lead to an important cost reduction in
labour hours, but parameters like production rate and related tooling development costs
have an extremely significant impact on the process applicability.

University of Manchester
Material interactions in ageforming
The University of Manchester team studied the creep be-
haviour of the new damage tolerant alloys, the basic
metallurgical mechanisms of the process, and material
interactions with the forming variables (e.g. heat treat-
ment, strain, pressure etc.). This was the first time the
ageforming process had been studied in such detail. Their
results showed that subtle interactions with the material
did occur, driven by the stress acting during ageing and
the creep processes, but they did not impact significantly
on the final material properties. A comparison of the
creep relaxation behaviour of some of the alloys stu-
died under constant strain conditions is shown in the
right figure. An example of the effect of the process on
one alloy (2022) is shown in the left figure, from the Das-
sault Aviation wing demonstrator, where a large strain is
found at the ‘break line’ and tensile or compressive stres-
ses are generated during forming at opposing surfaces.
These conditions resulted in the refinement and alignment
of phases with strongly asymmetric coherency strain fields
on habit plane variants sympathetic to the applied stress
state.
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 Contact

Project leader :
F. Eberl, Alcan CRV
CENTR’ALP, BP 27, 38341 Voreppe Cedex, France
Ph: +(33) 4 76 57 84 24
Fax: +(33) 4 76 57 80 99
E-mail: frank.eberl@alcan.com

European Commission :
H.J. von den Driesch, DG RTD
21 rue du champ de Mars, 1049 Brussels, Belgium
Ph: (32) 2 296 06 09
Fax: (32) 2 296 67 57
E-mail: Hans-Josef.von-den-Driesch@cec.eu.int

With the support of ALMA Consulting Group :

M. Giraud, ALMA Consulting Group
55 rue René Cassin. 69 338 LYON cedex 09
Ph: +(33) 4 72 35 80.30
Fax: +(33) 4.72 35 80 31
E-mail: mgiraud@almacg.com

Project partners :

S. Gardiner, Airbus UK
New Filton House, Filton, Bristol, BS99 7AR, England
Ph: +(44) 119 93 63216
Fax: +(44) 117 93 65085
E-mail: simon.gardiner@airbus.com

G. Campanile, Alenia Aeronautica

Engineering, Materials Processes and NDT Technology,
Viale dell’Aeronautica, 80038 Pomigliano D’Arco (Napoli), Italie
Ph: +(39) 081 8872697
Fax: +(39) 081 8872192
E-mail: Gcampanile@aeronautica.alenia.it

G. Surdon, Dassault Aviation

Advanced Technologies Development Center,
1 ave. du parc, 95100 Argenteuil, France
Ph: +(33) 1 34 11 86 89
Fax : +(33) 1 34 11 88 24
E-mail: Gilles.Surdon@dassault-aviation.fr
Création :: Comète :: 04 78 39 56 13

M. Venmans, Sabca
Chaussée de Haecht, 1470, 1130 Brussels, Belgium
Tel: +(32) 2 729 55 68
Fax: +(32) 2 729 58 97
E-mail: Maarten.Venmans@sabca.be

P. Prangnell, UoM, Manchester Materials Science Centre

Grosvenor St. Manchester M1 7HS, UK
Ph: +(44) 161 306 3610
Fax: +(44) 161 306 3586
E-mail: philip.prangnell@manchester.ac.uk