Design and development of a light aircraft assembly cycle in virtual environment

The work deals with the design of the assembly cycle of a light aircraft in virtual environment. To date the methodologies of product development are still traditional, this means not to create a competitive advantage towards industries that are present on the market with aircrafts similar for class and typology. For a long time, the strategic objective of the industries of the aeronautical sector has been (and continuous to be) to reconcile high quality, high level of innovation with low cost of development and manufacturing. Through the using of virtual reality is possible to connect the phases of development of the aircraft with that of engineering. The study has been carry out in collaboration with OMA SUD Sky Technology using Virtual Reality (VR) technologies in the VR Laboratory, named VRTest of the Competence Regional Center for the qualification of transportation systems founded by Campania Region. Thanks to VR techniques we have been able to define the best workplace layout configuration for the subgroups production, to define the assembly sequence of the structural subgroups, to determine for one of the aircraft subgroups an assembly sequence that can optimize the assembly cycle and the operations performed by the workers in the first phases of design. All that has allowed to resolve in phase of design of the assembly line and design of the equipment for the assembling, a series of problems relative to the sequences of subgroups assembly and of the assembly line, concerning the final assembly of the aircraft structure. Through this methodology we are able to test and to evaluate the interaction among human being and machines before setting up the whole line production and creating the physical mock-up of the equipments. Therefore we can propose design changes to the equipments before the beginning of the manufacturing process in order to make as easy as possible the operations to be performed and to reduce the time-cycle of the subgroups and the manufacturing cost.