De-risk assessment: LESSON - LargE Scale Struts prOductioN

The main achievement of this is the development of the LESSON manufacturing process. It included design and manufacturing of temporary, water-soluble tools suitable for liquid resin injection. Furthermore, it comprised the development of room temperature, out-ofautoclave, liquid resin injection process. Additionally, the dissolving process for the temporary tools that need to be extracted via small openings in the part was established.The process was demonstrated on with breadboard for 2 examplary applications:Breadboard A - secondary structure strut for a moon lander andBreadboard B - a lightweight CFRP alternative to the current VEGA SSMS dispenser strut made of aluminium. The successful design, manufacturing and testing of 5 breadboards each concluded the activity and demonstrated that the developed process and resulting products fully comply with the requirements

The production process of full-CFRP struts, was before only suitable for low volume production rates (~10 struts/month) and including worker safety critical processes. This approach had to be reviewed and changed to enable production rates >100/month and improve worker safety. The activity focused on the: Development of the new manufacturing process optimized for high-volume / low-cost manufacturing.Demonstration of the robustness and improved safety of the process by sample manufacturing and testing.Manufacturing of relevant strut breadboards and their testing in most relevant environment