Effect of the attitude fine-adjustment of compaction roller on automated fiber placement defects and trajectory

Abstract

Automated fiber placement shows great potential for fabricating complex aircraft structures. During AFP process, the process-induced defects and placement trajectory have important effect on the processing quality. These defects and trajectory are influenced by many factors, where the attitude of compaction roller is an important factor. By the attitude fine-adjustment of compaction roller, the placement defects and trajectory can be improved. It is necessary to study the effect of the attitude fine-adjustment of compaction roller on placement defects and trajectory. The attitude includes yaw and roll of compaction roller, and the placement defects mainly refer to the fitness degree and fiber pull-up. Firstly, the placement ability of compaction roller is defined by making full use of the allowable distance. Then, the yaw angle and position of compaction roller are calculated by differential geometry. Meanwhile, the yaw distance and placement width are given. Secondly, the fiber pull-up is defined and described as planar sinusoidal based on the fiber waviness theory. Then the roll angle and position of compaction roller are given. Finally, a series of experiments and simulations had been conducted to verify the feasibility of the developed method. Results demonstrate that the method can improve the placement defects and trajectory.

Determination and application of posture adjustable domain under constraints of placement quality

“…When tows are compacted on a curved surface, the pressure distribution along the roller axis is of great importance, it will result in different compaction states of the tows at different positions. 15,16 Compaction defects will appear in areas with insufficient pressure. To estimate the pressure distribution under variable postures, the characteristic of the compaction area is approximated by the normal curvature of the mold along the roller axis and the local surface is approximated as a sphere.…”

“…Jiang et al 14 established a simulation model of the flexible compaction roller so that the pressure distribution can be well simulated. Cheng et al 15, 16 calculated the pressure under the compaction roller, and the pressure distribution under yaw roller is further determined in Reference 16. Hormann P et al used the method of difference equation 17 and finite element 18 to obtain the temperature distribution during the placement process, and the influence of the infrared lamp geometric parameters on the temperature distribution is determined.…”

Compaction pressure distribution and pressure uniformity of segmented rollers for automated fiber placement

“…However, for layup onto complex surfaces, which is where AFP is particularly suitable, the uneven deformation of the compaction rollers leads to uneven pressure distribution [12][13][14] and further leads to uneven tack levels and layup defects. [14][15][16][17][18] Therefore it is not enough to study the compaction force alone, but also the compaction pressure and carry out quantitative evaluation of it.…”

“…Chu et al 19 modeled compaction pressure distribution by finite element method and analyzed the effect of roller deformation on layup quality. Cheng et al 16 analyzed the effect of the roller attitude on the fiber pull-up by means of differential geometry. Jiang et al 12,14 modeled the pressure distribution under the common compaction rollers in AFP and optimized the roller structure.…”

An improved path discretization method for automated fiber placement

“…7 Jinxiang Cheng et al studied the influence of the attitude of compaction roller on automated fiber placement defects and demonstrated that it can improve the laying quality by the attitude fineadjustment of roller. 8 Path planning has also attracted a lot of attention from many researchers. Most researchers focus on placement path generation algorithms, which include the initial path and offset path generation.…”