Adaptive Path Planning of Fiber Placement Based on Improved Method of Mesh Dynamic Representation

Abstract

Path planning for fiber placement is one of the research hotspots on composite fiber placement forming technology. The problem how to realize adaptive planning of placement path has great significance in improving the efficiency of automatic fiber placement and shortening product manufacturing period. Firstly, with the numerical simulation of moving interface, the iterative generation and wave propagation of reference path are simulated on the mesh surface, and the mesh dynamic representation (MDR) of fiber placement paths is realized. Then, through improvement on proposed algorithm, an optimal reference path which assures all the fiber directions to meet the requirements of product structure design is sought automatically, and thus adaptive planning of placement path is realized. The simulated automatic fiber placement mechanism can generate a series of equidistant paths through the equidistant propagation of reference path, by which the overlap and gap of fiber tows are avoided, and the quality of fiber placement is improved. Finally, the simple and complex surfaces for fiber placement are analyzed with finite element in the numerical experiment, and the obtained equidistant paths and fiber directions show the efficiency of the proposed method.