Visit us – Stand D125 Meeting the volumes, cost and technical challenges for further penetration of composites in airframes Prof. Prasad Potluri EPSRC High Value Manufacturing Catapult Fellow Professor of Robotics and Textile Composites Director of Research, Northwest Composites Centre University of Manchester
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Prof. Prasad Potluri - Easyfairs€¦ · Prof. Prasad Potluri EPSRC High Value Manufacturing Catapult Fellow ... blade exhibited at JEC 3D woven preform for nacelle structure: INTERTEX/Sigmatex
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Visit us – Stand D125
Meeting the volumes, cost and technical challenges for further penetration of
composites in airframes
Prof. Prasad Potluri EPSRC High Value Manufacturing Catapult Fellow
Professor of Robotics and Textile Composites Director of Research, Northwest Composites Centre
University of Manchester
Visit us – Stand D125
Outline
Recently developed composite airframes have over 50% by volume of composites mainly representing thin shell structures in fuselage and wings. These structures are fibre-placed with ATL/AFP machines and cured in autoclaves. Further penetration of composites to replaces relatively thick parts with complex geometry requires innovative manufacturing, analysis/design and testing/certification methods. These composites need to exhibit a degree of plasticity on impact and avoid brittle failure. Automated dry fibre placement, 3D weaving and braiding technologies are explored in this talk.
Visit us – Stand D125
Composites in a modern civil airframe A350XWB
Visit us – Stand D125
Hand Layup
Source: Composites World
Visit us – Stand D125
Automated Fibre placement (AFP/ATL)
Source: mtorres
The EPSRC Centre for Innovative Manufacturing in Composites
EPSRC funded centre: £10 million University of Nottingham University of Manchester University of Bristol Cranfield University National Composites Centre Aerospace: Airbus, GKN, Rolls-Royce Automotive: Bentley, Caparo, Lotus Energy: Luxfer, Vestas Sigmatex, Herzog
Visit us – Stand D125
Visit us – Stand D125
Fibre Placement a key link between carbon fibre production and manufacturing
composite structures
• Placing carbon fibres, continuous or discontinuous, with or without the resin, in preferred orientations and with specified placement accuracy (±σ) and throughput (kg/hr).
• Hand lay-up of prepregs and dry fabrics: suffers from accuracy and repeatability; limited throughput (<1kg/hr); prone to manufacturing defects such as wrinkles, overlaps etc; expensive.
• ATL, AFP Technologies: primarily prepreg material lay-up in conjunction with Autoclaves. Limited development with dry fibre tapes stabilised by nonwoven veils.
Visit us – Stand D125
Dry Fibre Placement
Textile Technologies such as weaving and multi-axial stitch bonding are the primary manufacturing platforms for 2D broadcloth;
automated cutting with ply cutters;
robotic pick and place – some progress
Draping – still done manually, not much progress in automated draping.
Dry fibre placement for placing fibres into near-net three dimensional shapes
• 3D Weaving of near-net shapes
• Braiding: stretching beyond making a sock
• Complex winding
• Robotic tow placement and tufting
Case for near-net 3D preforming
• Reduced assembly and post-processing costs
• Reduced fibre wastage
• Improved damage tolerance with through-thickness reinforcement
• Shifting a number of processing steps to lower-end of the composites supply chain
• In recent years, 3D weaving received a lot of attention due to a number of high-profile applications. However, 3D weaving based on conventional Jacquard loom technology has number of limitations.
• Near-net preforming of complex geometries can only be achieved with a combination of textile technologies including 3D weaving, fibre placement, braiding, stitching/tufting , as well as high-speed discontinuous fibre preforming technology.
Visit us – Stand D125
3D Weaving
3D Weaving on a 4 x 4 shuttle loom (1990s)
Carbon fibre weaving on a rapier loom (2014)
Multi-insertion 3D weaving (2015)
Visit us – Stand D125
3D weaving
3D woven seat frame
3Dwoven fan blade exhibited at JEC
3D woven preform for nacelle structure: INTERTEX/Sigmatex
Radial Braiding
Cruciform with metal insert
Braiding complex shapes
Automotive cantrail
complex multi-axial winding
Robotic 3D Fibre Placement
Automated dry fibre lay-up
Bias fibre placement
Tufting to join bias tows with 3D fabric
High speed robot for fibre and patch placement
Non-crimp biaxial, tufted
Visit us – Stand D125
Compression Moulding of Multi-Architecture Composites (CMMC)