For the reuse of components and structures made of fiber composite materials, a complete remanufacturing process chain is necessary to prepare the parts for a further life cycle. The first step is to dismantle the parts to be reused. Fiber composite components are mostly joined using adhesive technology, so that solution techniques are required for adhesive connections. One possibility is the separation of the adhesive layer by means of thermally expanding particles. Adhesive residues are removed by laser so that the components can be glued again after reprocessing. The decisive factor for which process is used for the remanufacturing of the components is the state at the end of the life cycle. Non-destructive testing methods offer a very good option for detecting damage, planning necessary repairs and direct reuse of damage-free components. Repairs to fiber composite structures have been carried out in aviation for a long time and are accordingly established. These processes can be transferred to the repair of automotive fiber composite components. Many technical solutions were developed and tested as part of the project. Future research work is aimed at further development, particularly with regard to the automation of the technologies in order to enable an industrial application of the recycling of automobile components made of fiber composites.
Carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP) is extensively used in automotive and aerospace industries with the aim to achieve reduction on emissions by reducing weight. Due to governmental regulations to reduce the environmental impact and to reduce waste, the need for remanufacturing CFRP is becoming an interesting area of application with economic benefits to industry. This is important as manufacturing carbon fiber is a costly process and remanufacturing CFRP is more cost effective and reduces the dependency on virgin materials. Processing CFRP to meet demands, for fast and high-quality cuts, can impose problems for conventional methods. The use of multi-pass scanning technique in laser cutting CFRP is investigated using a 1.5 kW fiber laser with assist gas pressure of 16 bar and gas flow rate of 126 lt/min. Using multi-pass technique, a through cut can be obtained by repeating the beam travel more than once. The advantage of laser cutting when compared with traditional CNC, is the low cost of maintenance over time due to the non-contact nature of the process i.e. no wear of tool at contact area. And due to the small beam spot size of the laser small and complex shapes can be cut. The aim of the paper is to determine how the process performs in terms of cutting speed and fiber damage. Average power was used to carried out experimental tests. A fiber damage below 100 µm with laser cutting speed of 2.5 m/min and above was obtained. Thermal effects were analyzed using scanning electron microscope (SEM) and optical microscope (OM). The fiber damage was further optimized using specialist methods such as double aperture nozzle and trenching. The use of trenching and double aperture further reduces the fiber damage to 10 µm and 50 µm, respectively with laser cutting speed of 7.5 m/min and 3.33 m/min.
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