Applying Automated Inline Inspection to Large Scale Braided Composite Preforms for High-Rate Production of Critical Components for Military and Commercial Aircraft

The U.S. Air Force (USAF) and Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) companies require high rate, lower cost composite manufacturing technologies for Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) and revolutionary air transport vehicles to achieve aggressive cost objectives without compromise to performance.A&P Technology (A&P) braids are extremely cost effective because they are built with robustly repeatable mechanical automation to create fiber architectures that follow the load paths of the specific structure being created as well as build the part geometry into the reinforcement, eliminating hand work and wasted raw material.  As an element of A&P’s continuous process development activities, A&P has deployed vision systems with machine learning to continuously monitor machine processing parameters.  There is a significant benefit to applying the artificial intelligence (AI) vision system to the preform itself as it is being constructed. Applicable large scale 3D preforms include multi-layer preforms for high temperature nosecones, nozzles, and winglets for hypersonic vehicles, preforms for fuselage, wings, and inlets ducts for attritable vehicles, preforms for military and civilian AAM propellers and tail rotors, low cost missile bodies and commercial turbine engine fan cases. A&P’s approach involves a refinement of  existing vision capabilities to monitor the features mentioned above on preforms with diameters from eight to sixty inches.  Effective deployment of this capability would yield a low-touch process for effective validation of large scale airworthy parts, which is an essential element of creating affordable, high performance structures for commercial and military applications.