Automated Honeycomb Composite Structure Repair System

The major challenge faced by the aerospace industry with advanced composites is the structural behavior. This is because of the inherent complex damage behavior of the composite material. The aircraft with continuous maintenance of structural integrity will have satisfactory performance. The composite structure used widely in various applications is Honeycomb Sandwich panel. The most important factor to repair the honeycomb sandwich panel is the technique in which the repairs are made. If the repair technique is improper then it may lead to immediate or potential danger. Because of this always the best available technique should be imposed to repair the sandwich panels. The aircraft reliability depends on the design quality and the quality of repairs. The design of an aircraft honeycomb sandwich panel repair system is made further difficult by the requirement that the weight after the repairs should not increase than the original weight of the sandwich panel. Manual repairing of honeycomb sandwich panels take more time and cost and also sometimes leads to loss of structural integrity due to human errors. In order to reduce the time and cost of repairing the honeycomb composite structure an automated system can be designed. Automated system includes drilling the damaged part without making more damages in panel, cleaning the wastage using the vacuum pump and filling the holes using chemical filler. These processes are controlled by micro controller using drivers. It will be useful in improving repairing techniques of sandwich structures.