Project duration

The project runs from 1 June 2013 to 31 May 2016.

Overall aim

The aim of the project is to tackle several fundamental issues affecting users of Large Volume Metrology (LVM) equipment and techniques in industrial locations. By bringing advanced metrology to bear on these issues the consortium hopes to reinvigorate R&D efforts across Europe into LVM and to stimulate new opportunities and novel application areas, whilst retaining the traceability to the SI required for multi-national operations often encountered in the aerospace and science communities.

Benefits to end-users

The JRP will benefit end-users in several direct technological and scientific pathways.

• Compensation for refractive index and turbulence effects should allow users in large factories and assembly locations to reduce the measurement uncertainties associated with existing and future optical-based measuring systems, thereby allowing more accurate alignment, machining and assembly. Compensation for the effects of refractive index variations can be an enabling step for future factory wide metrology networks, allowing progress towards the vision of the 'future factory'.
• Advanced modelling of multi-component is designed to enable end-users, particularly those in large aerospace or marine manufacture and assembly to demonstrate conformance to tolerance without expensive and energy-intensive thermal control of large environments such as aircraft hangars.
• Demonstration of new traceable ADM technologies can allow the next generation of commercial instruments to achieve intrinsic traceability to the SI. The line-of-sight refractive index systems and ADM systems could be coupled to provide refractive index compensated reference lengths for other measuring systems, e.g. photogrammetry networks, helping instruments to maintain accuracy in uncontrolled environments.
• The ADM-based refractive index compensated laser tracer could supplant existing laser tracers for use in industrial environments. The novel technology demonstrator built by INRIM will demonstrate a possible approach for tackling metrology in harsh environments.
• The Metrology Space and FSI based measuring systems are new techniques and developments of existing techniques, which, together with a novel approach being developed by INRIM, will deliver new capabilities for live 6 DoF data for multiple target clusters, and a capability to work in harsh environments.

The research within this EURAMET joint research project receives funding from the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme, ERA-NET Plus, under Grant Agreement No. 217257.

End of Project

The project ends on 31 May 2016.

End of Project Workshop

09:00 Wednesday 18 May 2016 to 14:00 Thursday 19 May 2016

The workshop was held at the National Physical Laboratory, Teddington, TW11 0LW, UK.

Presentations from the workshop are available on the workshop webpage