Assembly Concepts for Aircraft Cabin Installation

Abstract

The development of visionary integration concepts for the aircraft cabin is essential for the reduction of assembly times. In this paper the results of multiple joint research projects between the Hamburg University of Technology and Airbus Operations GmbH are presented. Based on an extensive as-is analysis, first concepts were set up applying prevalent design for assembly guidelines and resulting in the definition of top-level-requirements for the design and installation processes of aircraft cabins. Further research contained an analysis of the assembly processes of the cabin components in relation to their product structures. Concepts were generated using the PKT own developed modularization method. The method considers all relevant strategic perspectives of a company, one of which is the assembly. At the end a final assembly line optimized concept was defined. The concept mainly concentrates on the over-head storage bins, the so called Hatracks, the passenger service units (PSUs) and the lining panels. Since in the common way, all components are separately handled and mounted, their installation turned out to be the bottle neck of the assembly process. According to the developed measures, the degree of pre-assembly is raised. Thereby time intensive assembly tasks are parallelized and performed independently outside of the aircraft in earlier production phases. Due to the geometric dimensions and weight of the resulting cabin modules in this context, the utilization of a handling device becomes obligatory. The positive effects on the overall lead time reduction are evaluated. For all developed concept aspects technology demonstrators were constructed representing the overall installation process. Tests were performed in order to validate the estimated benefits.