After more than three years of research, Aitiip Technology Center has successfully concluded the HELACS project. An initiative funded by the Clean Sky 2 program of the European Commission, which has aimed to develop an innovative methodology of integral dismantling, to enable the classification, recycling and reuse of large components of composite materials from aircraft that have reached the end of their useful life.
Teruel Airport, partner of the project, has hosted in one of its hangars the final demonstration of this new technology, the dummy tool, which exploits the digital twin and human-robot collaboration. The functionality of this tool allows a robotic dismantling platform, patented by Aitiip, to reproduce the movement previously traced by an operator, so that the robot then performs the same route by cutting pressurized water.
For the test, which was attended by dozens of representatives of companies and clusters in the field of composite materials and the aerospace sector, as well as members of AERA and AEMAC, a structure of the 19th tail section of an Airbus 350 was chosen. With this development, Aitiip is promoting a technological solution capable of meeting the ecological, logistical and technical challenge of end-of-life for the more than 680,000 tons of composite material that are used in the production and dismantling of the Airbus 350.
