A Force Sensorless Method for CFRP/Ti Stack Interface Detection during Robotic Orbital Drilling Operations

Drilling carbon fiber reinforced plastics and titanium (CFRP/Ti) stacks is one of the most important activities in aircraft assembly. It is favorable to use different drilling parameters for each layer due to their dissimilar machining properties. However, large aircraft parts with changing profiles...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Mathematical problems in engineering 2015-01, Vol.2015 (2015), p.1-11
Main Authors: Xu, Guan-Hua, Fei, Shao-Hua, Han, Bing, Pan, Ze-Min, Fang, Qiang, Ke, Ying-Lin
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accuracy
Aircraft
Aircraft components
Aircraft detection
Aircraft parts
Algorithms
Carbon fiber reinforced plastics
Cutting force
Cutting parameters
Cutting tools
Disturbance observers
Drilling
Error detection
Machine tools
Machining
Mathematical analysis
Orbital drilling
Parameter identification
Researchers
Robotics
Sensors
Stacks
Studies
Thickness
Thrust
Thrust force
Titanium
Titanium base alloys
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Summary:Drilling carbon fiber reinforced plastics and titanium (CFRP/Ti) stacks is one of the most important activities in aircraft assembly. It is favorable to use different drilling parameters for each layer due to their dissimilar machining properties. However, large aircraft parts with changing profiles lead to variation of thickness along the profiles, which makes it challenging to adapt the cutting parameters for different materials being drilled. This paper proposes a force sensorless method based on cutting force observer for monitoring the thrust force and identifying the drilling material during the drilling process. The cutting force observer, which is the combination of an adaptive disturbance observer and friction force model, is used to estimate the thrust force. An in-process algorithm is developed to monitor the variation of the thrust force for detecting the stack interface between the CFRP and titanium materials. Robotic orbital drilling experiments have been conducted on CFRP/Ti stacks. The estimate error of the cutting force observer was less than 13%, and the stack interface was detected in 0.25 s (or 0.05 mm) before or after the tool transited it. The results show that the proposed method can successfully detect the CFRP/Ti stack interface for the cutting parameters adaptation.
ISSN:1024-123X
1563-5147
DOI:10.1155/2015/952049