Parametric Design and Formless Composite Manufacturing of UAV Structures Using Laser-Cut Airframes and Additive-Manufactured Functional Cores

Authors:
Christian Schmid, Quentin Hirtl, Michael Petke, Markus Ehrlenbach
FH-Kufstein Tirol Bildungs GmbH, Andreas Hofer Str. 7, A-6330 Kufstein, Österreich
Abstract:
The production of carbon fiber-reinforced structures of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), especially wing-based aircraft with a wingspan of approx. 1 m or more, is a multi-stage process based on the use of molds and devices. For series production, this approach has been tried and tested for many years and is commercially successful. If variants or scaling of the systems is required, the modification or new construction of the molds is necessary. This leads to high costs and long lead times. In order to enable economical and flexible production even in small quantities of drones, a production process based on the additive material extrusion process (MEX) was developed, which enables the moldless production of scalable fixed-wing drones while simultaneously reducing lead time and the required process steps. In the Presentation, the developed process will be compared with conventional production and presented in detail. The aim of this work is to investigate the potential of the developed process compared to the conventional multi-stage process in detail.