Robust development, validation and manufacturing processes for hybrid metal-composite lightweight structures

Hybrid structures combine different material properties and thus create components that are far ahead of the classic designs in terms of strength, stiffness and weight. With all these advantages, the manufacturing of these components is highly complex. Constantly increasing requirements result in increased engineering efforts. The multitude of adjustable and interacting parameters leads to a complex and multi-disciplinary product development process. The correlations and interactions of the process and disturbance parameters on the component properties are partly unknown for hybrid lightweight structures. For a reliable manufacturing process with low defect and rejection rates it is essential to monitor the process and component properties during production. The identification of the key parameters of the structure for the development and manufacturing of composite materials in combination with a process integrated monitoring technology offers the potential to get a higher efficiency and lower risk of failure. As a fundament to identify the key parameters, the whole product development procedure (engineering and manufacturing) is modelled, describing the methods and models used in the process, as well as the generated data. This process model and validation methods for hybrid structures are presented in this paper.