An interdisciplinary team of senior students, postgraduate researchers, and young scientists has been formed in the IRNITU laboratories. Together with experienced mentors, they are solving one of the key tasks of the domestic aircraft industry — automating the production of wing panels with strict aerodynamic requirements. Each panel reaches 25 meters in length and 2.5 meters in width, featuring complex double curvature in the longitudinal and transverse directions.
Special attention is being paid to machining accuracy: since the wing is part of a critical structure, deviations must not exceed micron-level tolerances. To achieve this parameter, student designers and programmers are developing not individual machines, but an entire digital complex — from design to quality control. Up to a thousand drawings are created for a single unit, and the software undergoes multi-stage verification.
A key stage was the development of technologies for strengthening aircraft parts. In the technological testing laboratory, students conduct endurance tests: samples are subjected to cyclic loads of up to seven tons at a frequency of 10 hertz.
The developments have already gone beyond the university walls: the UDF-4 unit is used at the Irkutsk Aviation Plant in the production of the MC-21 aircraft, as well as at enterprises in Ulyanovsk and Kazan.
The team is now focused on creating a full-fledged production line that brings together all stages of panel processing — from forming to geometry control. The goal is to deploy the complex at one of Russia's aircraft plants in the coming years.
Earlier, www1.ru reported that IAZ is expanding capacity for the serial production of the import-substituted MC-21 and is preparing a new bay for final wing assembly and shop-floor optimization.
Read more materials on the topic:
- Su-30 on a 3D printer: a young IRNITU specialist came up with a way to speed up fighter production
- An IRNITU engineer developed a domestic analogue of a pylon for the Embraer 170 for S7 Airlines
- A new technology for producing the blade shroud of the Mi-8 helicopter was developed by an IRNITU engineer
