Concurrent design and manufacturing of aircraft torque tubes

This paper presents an application of concurrent design and a manufacturing paradigm to aircraft torque tubes. The torque tubes are located inside the wing and push and pull the front leading flaps during landing. There are tubes on each side of the wing. The tubes are made up of magnesium through casting. The magnesium tubes are light but are poor in respect of corrosion-resistance. In addition, the casting process is extremely cost ineffective in supporting just-in-time manufacturing. Virtual prototyping and rapid prototyping techniques are employed to support both product and process re-engineering in a concurrent manner. The product re-engineering focuses on replacing magnesium with aluminum so as to eliminate the corrosion problems. A shape optimization technique was employed to reduce the weight of the tube whilst maintaining its strength A StereoLithography sample was fabricated using SLA 7000 to support design verification. In addition, the manufacturing process is re-engineered by replacing casting with machining. Significant savings in time and manufacturing cost have been realized through the use of the re-engineered tubes. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.