Multi-point positioning method for flexible tooling system in aircraft manufacturing

In the field of aircraft manufacturing, the conventional sixpoint location principle and relevant process equipment and technology can hardly meet the requirements of high efficient and high precision machining of large-scale thin-walled workpieces. To solve positioning problems of aircraft largescale thin-walled workpieces in its machining and assembly process, a flexible positioning tooling system is appeared and based on which the multi-point positioning method is developed to optimize the number, location and clamping force of the vacuum heads of flexible tooling system. By numerical simulation, an example is presented to verify the effectiveness of the positioning optimization method. Finally, numbers of experiments for thin-walled workpieces were carried out to validate the positioning optimization method and the numerical example. Test data show that the FEA method used in this paper can accurately reflect the deformation of the workpiece, and the deformation of the workpiece after positioning is minimized and the stiffness is maximized with the positioning optimization method when using flexible positioning tooling system.