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partnership of six companies partly funded under the UK
government's civil aviation research and demonstration
(CARAD) programme. The cell has shown the feasibility of
assembling the three principle components of a wing box
automatically using robotic technology. It includes
handling 6m high ribs and placing them between the
leading and trailing edge spars and skin wrapping and
fastening. Two robot systems were developed for external
and internal work, employing a combination of standard
robot arms and specials fitted with vision sensing and
drilling and fastening tooling. Software tools were used to
plan, simulate and programme the cell and also to
develop a full scaled-up version of the cell for studying
the potential of the systems employed for future
applications in production.
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Feature
297
Industrial Robot: An International Journal
Volume 28 . Number 4 . 2001 . pp. 297±301
# MCB University Press . ISSN 0143-991X
The wing of a modern aircraft is made up of
the main central wing box plus the leading
and trailing edges (Figure 1). The completed
wing box of an Airbus is a massive structure,
measuring up to 32m long 6 7.5m wide and
1.6m deep for the very long range A340-500/
600 (Plate 1), which is claimed to have the
world's largest aircraft wings ± the wing box of
the A380 with a 36m span will be even larger.
A wing box is made up of three major
components; the ribs (up to 41), the
longitudinal spars (between four and seven)
and the skin panels (up to four on the top and
four on the bottom), which are strengthened
with rows of stringers attached by thousands
of rivets and bolts.
Automatic riveting
Over £400 million has been invested in wing
box production at Broughton over the past
four years. This includes £21 million on an
Ingersoll spar milling machine, the only one
of its type in the world, £6.6 million on a
41m long 6 3.2m wide skin mill for
machining A340-500/600 panels, and £21
million on two low voltage electromagnetic
riveting machines (LVER), also for the A340
range. The latter automatically drills the holes
and inserts the fasteners to attach stringers to
the skin panels in a continuous operation ±
approximately 65,500 rivets and 32,000 bolts
are used in assembling one A340-500/600
wing skin.
The wing box is built up in the assembly jigs
(Plate 2) where the ribs and spars are loaded
in a set sequence. The skin assemblies are
then progressively located and drilled before
being bolted to the supporting ribs and spars.
Currently, this is a labour-intensive process
using manual drilling and fastening methods
with dedicated jigs and fixtures. Ideally, much
of this process should be carried out
automatically, but presents many difficulties,
not least the sheer physical size of the
components involved and the accuracies of
alignment needed. It was to study potential
solutions to these and other problems that
Airbus UK initiated the AWBA research
project.
AWBA has been carried out in two phases,
each of two years' duration: the £2 million
AWBA 1 completed in 1997; and the recently
concluded AWBA 11, which had a £5 million
Figure 1 Construction of a typical wing build
Plate 1 The very long range Airbus A340/600 that has the world's largest
wings, which are built at Airbus UK's Broughton plant
Plate 2 Current method of building a wing box of an A340/600 in an
assembly jig
298
Automatic wing box assembly developments
Brian Rooks
Industrial Robot: An International Journal
Volume 28 . Number 4 . 2001 . 297±301
budget. Both phases were 50 percent funded
by the DTI under the CARAD programme.
The first phase was to identify and acquire
specific technologies for automated assembly
of large wings while the prime objective of
AWBA 11 was to demonstrate flexible
manufacture within a single automated
assembly cell at the same time as securing
further enabling technologies and identifying
technology gaps.
Both phases involved several partners. In
phase two, these were AEA Technology
(robotic fastening process control),
automated handling and positioning systems
(AMTRI), BAE Systems Advanced
Technology Centre (ATC) ± Sowerby (vision
and sensor automated positioning systems),
　
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