The Boeing Company

Henry Macias

Kurtis Shuldberg Willden

Daniel M Rotter

Brad Andrew Coxon

Jennifer Sue Noel

Joseph D Anderson

Stephen Keith Kirchmeier

Kimberlee Madden

Paul Elfes Nelson

Stephen Lee Metschan

Richard V Phillips

Arvid J Berg

Paul Chih-Yung Chang

Scott Allen Boner

Eugene H Jeppesen

Brian Gregory Robins

Systems and methods for assembling a skin of a composite structure on an outer surface of an inner mold line layup mandrel. The systems and methods include receiving a plurality of ply kits, assembling the plurality of ply kits to form a skin segment that defines a portion of the skin, and affixing the skin segment to the outer surface of the layup mandrel. The assembling includes transferring a respective ply kit of the plurality of ply kits to a non-planar transfer tool, compacting the respective ply kit on the non-planar transfer tool, and repeating the transferring and the compacting for each ply kit in the plurality of ply kits to form the skin segment.

Systems and methods for assembling a skin of a composite structure

Methods of assembling a stiffened composite structure include loading, with a stiffener loading tool, a respective stiffener from a supply of stiffeners onto an inner mold line layup mandrel; repeating the loading to load a plurality of stiffeners onto the inner mold line layup mandrel; and following the repeating, affixing a respective skin segment from a supply of skin segments to the plurality of stiffeners loaded on the inner mold line layup mandrel to form at least a portion of the stiffened composite structure. Systems for assembling stiffened composite structures include a supply of stiffeners; an inner mold line layup mandrel; and a stiffener loading tool configured to load the respective stiffener onto the inner mold line layup mandrel.

Systems and methods for assembling stiffened composite structures

Growing community of inventors

Auburn, WA, United States of America

Henry Macias