GKN Aerospace is the world’s leading tier one aerospace supplier of systems and components. On its site in Kongsberg, Norway, GKN produces mainly turbine shafts and casings for civil and military engines, which are used for up to 100.000 flights every day around the globe.
Enhancing Surface Quality Inspection for Aerospace Turbine Shafts: A Critical Process for Performance and Safety
To prevent fatigue damage of turbine shafts due to high rotational speeds, temperatures and pressures, the surface quality plays a key role to fulfill the high quality requirements. Today, the surface quality is carefully checked in a manual visual inspection process.
On each turbine shaft up to 500 different features on the outer and inner surface of the part has to been investigated end documented. The quality standard in the aerospace industry requires reporting of all features deviating from product definitions (imperfections like small dents, scratches etc.) regarding visual inspection, also those that are acceptable on the part surface. This leads to a demanding and time consuming process.
GKN Aerospace Develops Automated Visual Inspection System (AVIS) for Enhanced Quality Control
As a part of further improvement of production processes in robustness and automation level, GKN develops an Automated Visual Inspection System (AVIS).
With this system, the inspection operators will be supported with an increased degree of automation in the next years to fulfill increasing quality requirements and to cope the workload. In a machine the surface and different features of the part is captured digitally. This data package is analyzed in a software using AI and analytical algorithms to identify deviations on the surface of the part.
In the next step the operator evaluates the indications done by the algorithms and corrects it if necessary for further improvement of the machine learning models by re-training. An automatized export of a digital report finishes the automated inspection process.
The development of the AVIS project makes an important contribution to GKN Aerospace’s future and ensures highest quality of engine parts in a work environment of increasing digitalization and workload.
Tech Tuesday is a collaboration between the Kongsberg Technology Cluster, Kongsberg, TechnipFMC , and GKN Aerospace. The goal is to bring people together for half an hour of lunch and learning, inspiring new collaborations and fostering connections across organizations.