Planned structure design of a helicopter door
Credit: DLR (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
The ultrasonic welding process is to be used to join the helicopter door
Project partner: Airbus Helicopters, Fraunhofer IGCV, Universität der Bundeswehr, München und Codronic
Application fields: aviation, traffic
Funding: BayLu25 - Funding for projects to increase productivity and material efficiency in the aviation industry
In the BayLu project "LIGHT", new helicopter doors are to be developed for the next generation of medium-heavy helicopters. For this purpose, various concepts with regard to individual part production, assembly and functional integration will be developed and validated using critical technology modules. With this approach, early and consistent interdisciplinary cooperation should harmonize the component-specific structure, system, manufacturing and assembly requirements. The project partners Airbus Helicopters, Fraunhofer IGCV, Universität der Bundeswehr, Munich and Codronic, together with the DLR in Augsburg, contribute their respective expertise. Specifically, based on the defined requirements and evaluation criteria, different door concepts are developed and optimized. Based on evaluation results, a holistic draft is developed, which is detailed and matured with regard to the constructive features as well as the production-technological elements of the process chain. To evaluate the integrated variant, individual critical technology components are physically validated. By combining the project results, an optimization should be achieved with the aim of significantly reducing the manufacturing costs of a future helicopter door.