How to design a more efficient and detailed quality check that can control the fasteners during the aircraft life-time?

My solution

My solution is Atlas Copco Impero, a 3D scanner tool with inbuilt AR projection and ultrasonic for a more efficient quality check

The quality check

The quality check (a control check of all fasteners) is one of the last steps when building an aircraft. There are one million fasteners at a normal sized aircraft and only 5 % of them are fastened by machine - the rest by hand. The quality check is done by hand by the Quality Technicians using a collection of different measurement templates called rivet gauges. Checking all fasteners would take too much time, therefore only a random amount of fasteners are checked. To achieve a high safety level and minimize the risk of bad fasteners, the air industry use many more fasteners than what would have been needed if all could be controlled. 

A perfect placed fastener should look like on the picture to the right. Achieving this perfect result when placing a fastener is very important as the fasteners are clamping the fuselage together. Only a small millimeter misstake can have huge consequences. For example if a fastener not is perfectly flush it will create turbulence around it which leads to higher fuel consumption and a bad influence on the environment. To achieve good quality on a fastener it need to have the right flushness, protrusion, seating, tension and torque, which are controlled during the quality check. During the Quality check the incorrect fasteners need to be changed.

The Operator checks the torque value with the nutrunner or wrench while tightening the fastener. After that, the Quality Technican checks the flushness, protrusion and seating of the fasteners using gauges. Not all fasteners are checked (as there are a million of them), the Quality Technican only checks a random amount of fasteners.

When the aircrafts at Airbus have passed their ”expiry date” they are either sold cheap to poor countries or dumped. The dumped aircrafts are stored in a ”desert aircraft boneyard”.

To use the aircrafts in a second market can lead to catastrophes as those aircrafts are in bad conditions with a low safety level, because of a too expensive quality check which they can’t afford. In general, all the maintenances where quality checks are done are very expensive and time consuming. This is the limiting factor for the life-time of airplanes. 

Identified problems:

• Inefficient quality check 

• Expensive & time consuming aircraft maintenances

• Many errors which takes time & cost money

• All fasteners can’t be checked (it takes too long time)

• More fasteners (than actually needed) have to be used to ensure safety as only a random amount of them are checked

• The location and information about the fasteners can’t be stored

• Too short lives for airplanes

• The tension can’t be checked with the tools used today

Sustainability

Efficiency

Quality

My primary focus and goal in this project was to find a solution of how the quality check can be done in a more efficient way, (compared to today) during and after the assembly process. I put on the sustainable glasses to be able to see the concept solution through that point of view. My wish was to find a solution of how to measure the tension of the fastener as it would entail a high quality level at the quality check and solve many problems .

”The maintenance cost of aircraft are extremely high, therefore if we are able to know the tension of each fastener, we can calculate the lifespan and maintenance time of the aircraft and it will save a lot of time and money” 

// Thibaut  Papaix, Atlas Copco Stockholm

Final concept

My solution is Atlas Copco Impero, a 3D scanner tool with inbuilt AR projection and ultrasonic for a more efficient quality check

Impero consists of three parts;

A tool which does the quality check of the fasteners by scanning.

A smart cloud which automatically saves all information about the fasteners.

A system where this information can be overviewed. 

My primary focus area was to design the tool and the total experience of the concept - where all parts play important roles.

Responsible designed

The main shell of Impero is made of recycled plastic and the scanning front and display have a cover in glass with a protecting rubber edge around. The size and weight is reduced as much as possible without compromising too much on the main functions of the product. It’s designed for easy disassembly to make maintenance easier. The components are accessible by unscrewing the 4 screws on the product, making it possible to recycle or change bad components. But as recycling also takes a lot of energy I was aiming to give the product a timeless design to increase the life of it and a possibility to be re-used. When the product not is used by Airbus anymore it could be re-used for the same or another scanning purpose by upgrading it for another task. At its end of life it should be disassembled for recycling and re-use of components. 

Advantages

The deep control of fasteners enables perfect placed fasteners, a high safety level & therefore less fasteners & less CO2 emissions.

Quality check scanner

During the quality check

• Checks many bolts at the same time

• Compares the scanned info with 3D drawing

• Checks seating, protrusion & flushness

• Marks out errors

Ultra checker

During the tightening or quality check

• Checks the fasteners with ultra sound

• Checks seating, protrusion, flushness & tension

• High quality level

• Marks out errors

• This concept could be a handheld tool or an add-on to an existing tool like the wrench

Smart bolt

During tightening

• Inbuilt strain gauges on bolts make them smart

• The smart bolts are checked with a new wrench while tightening

• The wrench checks seating, protrusion, flushness, torque & tension

• Very high quality level

• No additional quality check needed

I chose to continue with a combination of the Quality check scanner and the Ultra checker. The concept is using the Ultra sonic technique for doing the quality check and measuring the tension of the bolts, but also has the scanning function to check many bolts at the same time.