Abstract
Automated fiber placement (AFP) has been widely used as an advanced manufacturing technology for large and complex composite parts and the trajectory planning of the laying path is the primary task of AFP technology. Proposed in this paper is an experimental study on the effect of several different path planning placements on the mechanical behavior of laminated materials. The prepreg selected for the experiment was high-strength toughened epoxy resin T300 carbon fiber prepreg UH3033-150. The composite laminates with variable angles were prepared by an eight-tow seven-axis linkage laying machine. After the curing process, the composite laminates were conducted by tensile and bending test separately. The test results show that there exists an optimal planning path among these for which the tensile strength of the laminated specimens decreases slightly by only 3.889%, while the bending strength increases greatly by 16.68%. It can be found that for the specific planning path placement, the bending strength of the composite laminates is significantly improved regardless of the little difference in tensile strength, which shows the importance of path planning and this may be used as a guideline for future AFP process.
Highlights
Pérez Bergmann andIn recent years, fiber-reinforced composite materials have been widely used in the automotive industry, aeronautics, astronautics, etc
Automated fiber placement (AFP), as an advanced manufacturing technology that has been gradually developed in recent years, has been widely used in the manufacture of various large spacecraft structures, such as satellites and solid rockets, instead of the traditional manual prepreg placement molding
Analysis of the placement process problems, which are caused by the change of prepreg curvature during the automated placement process
Summary
Fiber-reinforced composite materials have been widely used in the automotive industry, aeronautics, astronautics, etc. Compared with the straight laying, the continuous change of fiber track curvature in the layer could significantly improve the mechanical property of the laminates with holes. Gurdal et al [9] elaborated the concept of “variable stiffness” and proposed a new fiber curve path planning method, which made the fiber trend change linearly with the reference geometric axis, compared with the linear lamination. This method could effectively improve the buckling load of the laminates.
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