Digital twin modeling method based on biomimicry for machining aerospace components

High-performance aerospace component manufacturing requires stringent in-process geometrical and performance-based quality control. Real-time observation, understanding and control of machining processes are integral to optimizing the machining strategies of aerospace component manufacturing. Digital Twin can be used to model, monitor and control the machining process by fusing multi-dimensional in-context machining process data, such as changes in geometry, material properties and machining parameters. However, there is a lack of systematic and efficient Digital Twin modeling method that can adaptively develop high-fidelity multi-scale and multi-dimensional Digital Twins of machining processes. Aiming at addressing this challenge, we proposed a Digital Twin modeling method based on biomimicry principles that can adaptively construct a multi-physics digital twin of the machining process. With this approach, we developed multiple Digital Twin sub-models, e.g., geometry model, behavior model and process model. These Digital Twin sub-models can interact with each other and compose an integrated true representation of the physical machining process. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed biomimicry-based Digital Twin modeling method, we tested the method in monitoring and controlling the machining process of an air rudder.     

Digital Twin-driven machining process for thin-walled part manufacturing

Thin-walled parts are widely used in the aerospace, shipbuilding, and automotive industry, but due to its unique structure and high accuracy requirements, which leads to an increase in scrapped parts, high cost in production, and a more extended period in the trial machining process. However, to adapt to fast production cycles and increase the efficiency of thin-walled parts machining, this paper presents a Digital Twin-driven thin-walled part manufacturing framework to allow the machine operator to manage the product changes, make the start-up phases faster and more accurate. The framework has three parts: preparation, machining, and measurement, driven by Digital Twin technologies in detail. By establishing and updating the workpiece Digital Twin under a different status, various manufacturing information and data can be integrated and available to machine operators and other Digital Twins. It can serve as a guideline for establishing the machine tool and workpiece Digital Twin and integrating them into the machining process. It provides the machine operator opportunities to interact with both the physical manufacturing process and its digital data in real-time. The digital representation of the physical process can support them to manage the trial machining from different aspects. In addition, a demonstrative case study is presented to explain the implementation of this framework in a real manufacturing environment.     

Framework and deployment of a cloud-based advanced planning and scheduling system

Many small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises (SMEs) have already implemented enterprise resource planning (ERP) and manufacturing execution system (MES) and began to start the journey of cloud manufacturing; however, the high cost of hardware and software investment, implementation, and maintenance usually hinder SMEs from adopting an advanced planning and scheduling (APS) system. This paper aims to develop a cloud-based APS (C-APS) system framework, the service structure, and approach of deploying the C-APS system in a public cloud infrastructure platform and service provider or hybrid cloud platform. The package diagram is proposed for building the C-APS system's virtual factory model to improve modeling efficiency and data stability. The C-APS system is a cloud-based and object-oriented software; its simulation-based scheduling engine can generate the significant production and operations schedule, and has the characteristics of on-demand self-service, quickly expanding and adjusting to the virtual plant model. The C-APS system's application in a leading automotive part assembly company's printed circuit board production scheduling shows that the input planning data model is easy to maintain. The scheduling quality is high; the computing time is short and acceptable for practical application.     

Accurate positioning of a drilling and riveting cell for aircraft assembly

Modern aircraft assembly demands assembly cells or machines with higher machining efficiency and accuracy. Thus, a dual-machine drilling and riveting cell is developed in this paper. We firstly discuss its physical design, as well as the automatic drilling and riveting process. With the automatic drilling and riveting cell, drilling and riveting production line of aircraft panels can be expected. The frame chain of the drilling and riveting cell is constructed to link the assembly cell to its task space, which is the kinematics base. System calibrations, including task space calibration, the sensor calibration of an orientation alignment unit, the floating calibration of the implicit hand-eye relationship, are explored. For high positioning accuracy, a multi-sensor servoing method is proposed for cell positioning. An orientation-based laser servoing strategy, which uses the feedback of the orientation errors measured by laser displacement sensors, is used to align drilling direction and camera shooting direction. Besides, A single-camera-based visual servoing is applied to align the tool center point (TCP) to reference holes, to obtain their coordinates for drilling position modification. Experiments of multi-sensor servoing for cell positioning are performed on an automatic drilling and riveting machine developed for the panel assembly of an aircraft in China. With the cell positioning method, the automatic drilling and riveting cell can approximately achieve an accuracy of 0.05 mm, which can adequately fulfill the requirement for the assembly of the aircraft.     

基于多项式拟合的CT图像环状伪影校正

探测器探元的响应不一致性会使CT图像中出现环状伪影,环状伪影是影响CT图像像质的重要因素,影响图像的分析及后续处理。为此提出一种基于分段多项式拟合的环状伪影校正方法,该方法适用于单材质或图像中的材质衰减系数相差不大的情况。采用分段多项式拟合正弦图累加曲线得到修正因子,用修正因子修正不一致的探元,最后重建图像。实验结果证明此方法能有效抑制图像正中间部分环状伪影。     

A stick-slip piezoelectric actuator with an integrated sensing unit for the measurement and active control of the contact force

Output characteristics of the stick-slip piezoelectric actuators are intrinsically affected by the contact force between the driving foot and the mover. Therefore, it would be quite meaningful to measure and control the contact force. In this study, by integrating a group of strain gauges into the driving compliant mechanism, a stick-slip piezoelectric actuator with measured contact force was proposed. The main structural parameters of the driving compliant mechanism were designed and analyzed. Through experiments, the sensing unit was calibrated, and the results showed that it had good linearity, and the noise level was 3.5 mN. The contact force was measured by the sensing unit, and accordingly, the relationship between the contact force and the stepping characteristic was explored. It was shown that the change in contact force would lead to the evolution in stepping characteristic, which finally resulted in the motion nonlinearity of the actuator in large stroke output. Accordingly, by actively controlling the contact force, a method was proposed to tune the stepping characteristic. The comparative results demonstrated that this method could significantly improve the motion linearity of the actuator in large stroke output under various preloads and even very rough surface.     

Improved genetic algorithm based on multi-layer encoding approach for integrated process planning and scheduling problem

Integrated process planning and scheduling (IPPS) is of great significance for modern manufacturing enterprises to achieve high efficiency in manufacturing and maximize resource utilization. In this paper, the integration strategy and solution method of IPPS problem are deeply studied, and an improved genetic algorithm based on multi-layer encoding (IGA-ML) is proposed to solve the IPPS problem. Firstly, considering the interaction ability between the two subsystems and the multi-flexibility characteristics of the IPPS problem, a new multi-layer integrated encoding method is designed. The encoding method includes feature layer, operation layer, machine layer and scheduling layer, which respectively correspond to the four sub-problems of IPPS problem, which provides a premise for a more flexible and deeper exploration in the solution space. Then, based on the coupling characteristics of process planning and shop scheduling, six evolutionary operators are designed to change the four-layer coding interdependently and independently. Two crossover operators change the population coding in the unit of jobs, and search the solution space globally. The four mutation operators change the population coding in the unit of gene and search the solution space locally. The six operators are used in series and iteratively optimized to ensure a fine balance between the global exploration ability and the local exploitation ability of the algorithm. Finally, performance of IGA-ML is verified by testing on 44 examples of 14 benchmarks. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can find better solutions (better than the optimal solutions found so far) on some problems, and it is an effective method to solve the IPPS problem with the maximum completion time as the optimization goal.     

Difficulty and complexity definitions for assembly task allocation and assignment in human–robot collaborations: A review

This paper presents a literature review on the different aspects of task allocation and assignment problems in human–robot collaboration (HRC) tasks in industrial assembly environments. In future advanced industrial environments, robots and humans are expected to share the same workspace and collaborate to efficiently achieve shared goals. Difficulty- and complexity-aware HRC assembly is necessary for human-centric manufacturing, which is a goal of Industry 5.0. Therefore, the objective of this study is to clarify the definitions of difficulty and complexity used to encourage effective collaboration between humans and robots to leverage the adaptability of humans and the autonomy of robots. To achieve this goal, a systematic review of the following relevant databases for computer science was performed: IEEE Xplore, ScienceDirect, SpringerLink, ACM Digital Library, and ASME Digital Collection. The results extracted from 74 peer-reviewed research articles published until July 2022 were summarized and categorized into four taxonomies for 145 difficulty and complexity definitions from the perspectives of (1) definition-use objectives, (2) evaluation objectives, (3) evaluation factors, and (4) evaluation variables. Next, existing definitions were primarily classified according to the following two criteria to identify potential future studies on the formulation of new definitions for human-centric manufacturing: (1) agent specificity and (2) common aspects in manual and robotic assemblies.