New concept for the Integration of Additive Manufactured Mechanical and Mechatronic Components in Aircraft Interior Systems

In this paper, the feasibility and the opportunities of structural printing technologies for the integration of mechanical and mechatronic components in aircraft interior systems are shown. Hereby, the substrate material for cabin lining elements consists of composite materials with fiber reinforced face sheets and a honeycomb core. As structural printing technology the Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) process was used. The described process enables a direct FFF-material injection in composite materials, the resulting pile-fixation as well as a subsequent structural printing process for the automated manufacturing of mechanical and mechatronic components on composite materials. Therefore, two decisive process steps need to be examined. Firstly, the injection process of a FFF-material into a honeycomb of a composite material will be investigated showing that a complete filling process is possible. Secondly, the tensile strength in dependence of the printing parameters will be presented. Thereby, an optimized parameter combination could be found to achieve a maximum tensile force of around 400 N for a base area of four square centimeters, which results in a tensile strength of 1 N/mm
²
.