This project has received funding from the Clean Sky 2 Joint. Undertaking under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 785446.

Acronym: BBT
Call: H2020-CS2-CFP06-2017-01
Type of action: CS2-RIA
(research and innovation action)
Duration: 24 months
(01/01/2018-31/12/2019)
Total Funding: 400.503,71 €

The vision of the EU programme HORIZON 2020 is to bring breakthroughs, promising discoveries and great ideas from the lab to the market. This shall create and ensure jobs. The aeronautical sector through Clean Sky 2 Work Programme aims at contributing to one of the key Societal Challenge ‘smart, green and integrated transport’ defined in Horizon 2020, enabling cutting edge solutions to decrease the environmental impact of the sector and to achieve the ACARE 2020 goals, facilitating the first steps to the Flightpath 2050 targets that include 75% cut of CO2 and 90% of NOx consumptions as well as 65% noise reduction.

The programme Clean Sky 2 pursues the delivery of full-scale in-flight demonstration of novel architectures and configurations including advanced technologies demonstrated at full systems level, that otherwise are not affordable by the private sector with a manageable risk. In this sense, the competitiveness of the European industry is fostered from environmental and economic point of view.

Clean Sky 2 affords the development of different technology demonstrators to advance towards the mentioned objectives. The Ultra High Propulsive Efficiency (UHPE) engine architecture is within the ITD devoted to the develop and validate new radical engine architectures able to meet the targets of ACARE 2020. The UHPE includes significant changes in the configuration and functioning scheme compared to current technology for the aircraft engines. A main change is the addition of a gearbox to decouple the fan and the turbine rotation, resulting in new requirements for the main turbine shaft (increased RPM and decreased torque); these aspects involve new size and shape needs for this shaft that challenge the current manufacturing methods to achieve an internal bottle bore geometry with Length to Diameter ratio above 30 and length over 2 meters. At this point, the BBT project covers the development of new tooling systems to perform the machining of the shaft with the required precision and quality.
The main objective of the BBT project is to develop an intelligent tool concept for the internal profiling of the engine drive shaft integrating different technological subsystems that enable the achievement of large Length to Diameter ratio and meeting the aeronautic requirements related to the machined surface condition.

The achievement of this main objective is complemented with two specific objectives for the research and innovation activities driving to the development of the BBT tool. These specific objectives are related to the development of the different subsystems and their integration in the tool concept design that will be tested in the project.

Objective 1
Design of the subsystems
of the tooling system

This objective is related to the selection of the different functional elements that must be integrated in the tooling system to achieve the requirements for the machining of the engine drive shaft. The identified systems include:

  • Mechanism for the tool radial movement to achieve the required geometry in the workpiece.
  • Supports to achieve a suitable stiffness in the system.
  • Cutting system, including insert, insert holder and cooling/lubrication system.
  • Monitoring system, including sensors, measuring chain and data treatment.
  • Chip evacuation system

Objective 2
Integration of the subsystems
in a tool concept design

The integration of the different subsystems (actuation mechanisms, supports, cutting inserts/tool-holder, cooling systems, sensors and monitoring system, chip evacuation system, different drive systems for cutting inserts and supports) in a single tool concept becomes a challenge due to the large amount of systems to be integrated in the system and the reduced space available. In this way, the selection of the different subsystems becomes a process to balance the performance and the complexity of the tool concept.
At the end, the integrated design must allow the manufacturing of the tool and the validation in a real machining application.

The progress beyond the state of the art are related to the subsystems developed and the integration of these subsystem in the boring bar design. These advances can be summarized as:

  • Integration of sensors and actuation system in the boring bar.
  • Development of a chip size monioring system.
  • Development of a internal support for the boring bar.

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