Abstract
Large design and manufacturing effort for high load carrying composite structures results from anisotropic material behavior, tedious curing or forming conditions as well as high sensitivity to manufacturing defects. Such challenges limit the design freedom and result in large cost and time effort. A novel design approach is proposed to realize load carrying structures based on the utilization of the outstanding flexibility of thin composite shells and the “complexity for free” approach of additive manufacturing. To this purpose, highly integrated structures are created by folding cured and thin composite shells around additively manufactured internal core topologies. The developed structures do not require complex molding approaches, while maintaining a high degree of manufacturing quality. A multidisciplinary design optimization is used to fully exploit the design freedom and the load carrying capabilities of the structure. Following the design concept, a UAV wing structure that carries more than 100 times its own weight is developed, optimized and tested to validate the design approach and demonstrate load carrying ability and manufacturing quality.
Highlights
Design and manufacturing effort of lightweight composite structures increases drastically with increasing demand on load carrying capability [1,2]
This study presents a design and manufacturing concept successfully bridging the gap between high load carrying composite structures and additive manufacturing
The concept is based on the folding of cured, thin composite‐shells around additively manufactured core topologies, allowing to manufacture highly complex, mold‐free structures
Summary
Design and manufacturing effort of lightweight composite structures increases drastically with increasing demand on load carrying capability [1,2]. High performance structures, utilized for example in aerospace applications, have highest demands on manufacturing quality. This is accompanied by large manufacturing cost and time effort and leads to long lead times and slow design iterations. Processes like additive manufacturing with its capability to quickly produce complex geometries already show potential in facilitating novel designs [7]. They are not yet applicable to large load carrying structures and not an alternative to mold‐based approaches, which are required to yield good mechanical properties for high performance applications. Recent developments in continuous fiber 3D‐printing with high volume fractions are promising to overcome this chasm [8,9], but still require a considerate amount of development to produce the highest complexity parts at aerospace quality
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