Cost Models For Composite Structure Fabrication And Its Application

The primary objective of this paper is to develop the cost models for composite structure fabrication based on existing cost models. A cost estimation code is developed based on the manufacturing process-based cost modeling and by using Delphi and SQL Server. The main work includes the following aspects:(1) The paper provides a comprehensive overview of the researches in the field of the cost evaluation for composite structure manufacturing.(2) The fundamental features, modeling process, cost elements, and time scaling laws of the cost modeling are discussed in detail.(3) The cost models of some typical molding techniques for composite structure fabrication are discussed, and the complexity scaling which affects process time is emphasized especially. Moreover, the product complexity scaling factor defined by previous researchers is improved to characterize the complexity of products by introducing a curvature entropy concept.(4) The whole scheme, flow of the cost estimation and cost data-base are established.(5) Being established in the study of the laminated composite substructures of civil aircrafts, the strength is analyzed for an aileron structure manufactured with composite materials, which is one of the two aileron structures (the other one is manufactured with metallic materials). And then the costs of two ailerons are estimated by using the developed code. The results indicate that the manufacturing cost of the composite aileron is lower than the metallic aileron because of using low-cost process and integrated design concept.