F-35 Aluminum Composite Stack Drilling

Abstract

Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company (LMAC), Fort Worth, Texas, is experiencing issues when drilling advanced aluminum composite stacked skin material for the F-35 Joint Strike fighter (JSF). The current tooling (drill) requires slower feed rates than desired due to the necessity of drilling through air gaps between the composite and aluminum stacks. Chip evacuation during the drilling operation also is an issue; chips can get trapped within the air gap between the two material stacks and erode the composite material on the exit side of the hole. The current tooling also creates higher drilling forces than desired by LMAC. LMAC's demands are increasing for the drilling of the aluminum composite stacked material used in the forward fuselage and wing assemblies on the F-35 JSF aircraft. Therefore, LMAC called upon the National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining (NCDMM) to lead a collaborative effort to research various drill geometries that would result in a more efficient solution for drilling these components to the specifications required by LMAC.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 23, 2006
Accession Number
ADA481838

Entities

Organizations

  • National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining

Tags

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Aeronautics
  • Air Gaps
  • Aircrafts
  • Aluminum
  • Assembly
  • Composite Materials
  • Drills
  • Fighter Aircraft
  • Geometry
  • Machining
  • Manufacturing
  • Materials
  • Specifications
  • Standards
  • Tools

Readers

  • Aerospace Engineering
  • Combustion and Flow Dynamics.
  • Manufacturing Engineering.