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a,*
a
State Key Lab of Digital Manufacturing Equipment and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology,
Wuhan 430074, China
b
AVIC Harbin Aircraft Industrial Group Co., Ltd., Harbin 150066, China
KEYWORDS
Automated tape placement;
Geodesic;
Placement suitability;
Wrinkling;
Composites
Abstract Automated tape placement is an important automated process used for fabrication of
large composite structures in aeronautical industry. The carbon ber composite parts realized with
this process tend to replace the aluminum parts produced by high-speed machining. It is difcult to
determine the appropriate width of the composite tape in automated tape placement. Wrinkling will
appear in the tape if it does not suit for the mould surface. Thus, this paper deals with establishing
placement suitability criteria of the composite tape for the mould surface. With the assumptions for
ideal mapping and by applying some principles and theorems of differential geometry, the centerline
trajectory of the composite tape is identied to follow the geodesic. The placement suitability of the
composite tape is examined on three different types of non-developable mould surfaces and four
criteria are derived. The developed criteria have been used to test the deposition process over several
mould surfaces and the appropriate width for each mould surface is obtained by referring to these
criteria.
2015 The Authors. Production and hosting by Elsevier Ltd. on behalf of CSAA & BUAA. This is an
open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
1. Introduction
Fiber reinforced composites offer many advantages over traditional structural material. Some advantages include high
strength-to-weight ratio and stiffness-to-weight ratio. New aircraft programs, such as the Boeing 787 and Airbus A350XWB,
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +86 27 87559416.
E-mail address: ronglei@mail.hust.edu.cn (R. Sun).
Peer review under responsibility of Editorial Committee of CJA.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cja.2015.06.002
1000-9361 2015 The Authors. Production and hosting by Elsevier Ltd. on behalf of CSAA & BUAA.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Placement suitability criteria of composite tape for mould surface in automated tape placement
One of the major drawbacks with ATP is its limitation on
acceptable mould shapes. ATP is generally used to produce surfaces for which curvature radii are superior to 10 m in the directions normal to the laying direction. If the Gaussian curvature
presents too large variation, then a local tape wrinkling can
appear.7 Tape wrinkling is highly undesirable because it results
in a weakened part.5 For a non-developable mould surface, as
the width of the tape is reduced, the amount of wrinkling
decreases. However, this is at the expense of production rate.
Typically, the width of the composite tape used in ATP is 75,
150, 300 mm. It is difcult to determine the appropriate width
of composite tape for an arbitrary non-developable mould surface so that both of the amounts of wrinkling and the production
rate are in acceptable range. Studying the inuence of tape width
and geometry characteristics of mould surface on the wrinkling
in composite tape will help solving the above dilemma.
The centerline of composite tape generally follows natural
paths, as dened by mathematical geodesics.8 The importance
of geodesics is well recognized by ATP industry. The identication of geodesics across the various surfaces of the airplanes
structure would improve the performance of the composite
tape as well as save weight and material.9 Geodesics also allow
minimizing steering of the tape.7 In the academic eld,
China1015 and scholars from other countries1619 generally
compute tape (ber) paths on the mould surface. An important
eld of study that has received little attention is modeling the
wrinkling in the composite tape on the mould surface. Xiong
and Wen proposed that there will be no deformation in composite tape if it follows the geodesic.20,21 However, wrinkling
will still emerge in composite tape even if it follows the geodesic on non-developable mould surface. Longo et al. dealt with
mathematical modeling and simulation related to the ATP.22
In their work, the centerline of composite tape is identied
to follow the geodesic so that the deposition error is minimized. Wrinkling in tapes is estimated with respect to the value
of the Gaussian curvature of the surface. However, they did
not consider stretching which may also appear in the composite tape. Meanwhile, their criterion is not suitable for the
mould surface of negative Gaussian curvature. In our work,
we present some new criteria to determine the placement suitability of composite tapes for mould surfaces. By using these
criteria, the adequate tape width for non-developable mould
surface can be obtained. At the same time, the placement efciency is also considered.
This paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, the position of tape bers on the mould surface is determined and a
geodesic coordinate is established. In Section 3, the centerline
trajectory of the composite tape is identied to follow the geodesic. In Section 4, the placement suitability of composite tape
is examined on three different types of non-developable mould
surface and four criteria are obtained. In Section 5, the slippage of the edge ber with respect to the center ber of
5228/T700 prepreg is obtained through experiments.
Section 6 demonstrates the application of these criteria and
Section 7 makes the conclusion.
Fig. 1
roller.
1575
Fig. 2
1576
P. Zhang et al.
Referring to Eq. (1), L0 can be obtained through the following integral equation:
Z vL
Z L p
L0
ds
Gl; vdv
2
v0
Gl; v G0; v l
2
@u
@u2
ud
u0
p
p
2 2
@ Gu; v
l @ Gu; v
1l
;
3
2
@u
@u2
u0
ud
where 0 6 d 6 l.
Referring to the differential geometry,24 the following
equations are obtained:
p
p
@ Gu; v
kgu0 v G0; v kgu0 v
4
@u
u0
p
2
p
@ Gu; v
Kd; v Gd; v
5
2
@u
ud
where kgu0 v is the geodesic curvature of the centerline trajectory at point P0; v and Kd; v is the Gaussian curvature at
point Pd; v.
Combining Eqs. (3)(5) with Eq. (2), it follows that
Z L
Z
p
l2 L
e1 L0 L l
kgu0 vdv
Kd; v Gd; vdv 6
2 0
0
where e1 needs to be minimized so that the amount of wrinkling or stretching in the neighborhood of the centerline
l ! 0 is minimized.
p
RL
2 RL
For clarity, l 0 kgu0 vdv and l2 0 Kd; v Gd; vdv
are represented as j1 and j2 , respectively.
When l ! 0, j2 is negligible compared to j1 . Therefore,
minimizing e1 is in fact to minimize j1 .
In the neighborhood of the centerline of the composite
tape, j1 is minimized when kgu0 v 0, which means the centerline trajectory of the composite tape follows a geodesic.
4. Placement suitability criteria of composite tape for mould
surface
In this section, the wrinkling or stretching is examined on the
tape edge u W2 .
The local tape wrinkling on the tape edge can be represented as:
s
!
W
G
e2
; v 1 dv
2
p
W
W2
kgu0 v
Ku; v Gu; v dv
7
8
2
where 0 6 u 6 W=2 and Ku; v is the Gaussian curvature at
Pu; v.
If the composite tape is placed onto a mould surface with
zero local Gaussian curvature, then Ku; v 0, and Eq. (7)
can be simplied as
e2
W
kgu0 vdv
2
11
12
Next, the value of e3 is examined considering that the composite tape is applied to three different types of mould surfaces.
Situation 1. The composite tape is applied to a mould surface
of positive Gaussian curvature.
Placement suitability criteria of composite tape for mould surface in automated tape placement
On this type of mould surface, Ku; v > 0. Substituting it
into Eq. (10), then LW=2 6 L, which indicates that if the
slippage of the bers is not considered, wrinkling will appear.
p
From Eq. (3), it is obtained that Gu; v 6 1. Let Kmax
denote the maximum value of the Gaussian curvature on the
mould surface, then 0 < Ku; v 6 Kmax .
Referring to Eq. (10), the range of e3 is obtained as
1
Kmax LW2 6 e3 < 0
8
13
14
1577
Combining Eq. (13) with Eq. (14), it is obvious that no wrinkling will appear when the following inequality is satised:
1
0 < e3 6 Kmin LW2
8
1
Kmax LW2 P Lg1 W
8
15
Remark 3. For a mould surface of positive Gaussian curvature, no wrinkling will appear when the tape satises the
following inequality:
W2
8
6
g1 W Kmax
16
17
18
19
Remark 4. For a mould surface of negative Gaussian curvature, stretching will appear when the tape satises the
following inequality:
W2
8
>
g1 W
Kmax
20
e3 6 Lg1 W
21
22
Combining Eq. (21) with Eq. (22), it is obvious that no stretching will appear when the following inequality is satised:
1
Kmin LW2 6 Lg1 W
8
23
p
However, only on developable mould surface, Gu; m 1.
Therefore, the above inequality can only be used as a reference
to acquire the adequate tape width for the mould surface.
Remark 5. For a mould surface of negative Gaussian curvature, a reference criterion which helps to acquire the adequate
tape width is obtained as
W2
8
6
Kmin
g1 W
24
25
26
The reference criterion in Situation 2 enables us to get the adequate tape width as
1578
P. Zhang et al.
W2
8
6
g1 W
K3
27
29
30
Wrinkling
75
62500
60000
57500
55000
52500
No
No
No
No
Yes
150
130000
125000
120000
115000
110000
No
No
No
No
Yes
300
255000
250000
245000
240000
235000
No
No
No
No
Yes
Fig. 3
6. Application
The criteria developed in the previous section will be applied to
testing the deposition processes over several mould surfaces. In
each deposition process, the 5228/T700 prepreg is used.
Meanwhile, the placement temperature is set as 33 C and
the roller pressure is set as 500 N.
At rst, a spherical mould surface which is characterized by
its radius R1 is considered. In the subsequent part, we aim to
determine the appropriate width of the composite tape for
the mould surface so that no deposition error will appear.
Meanwhile, if the criteria are satised, a wider tape will be
acceptable to acquire higher placement efciency.
The Gaussian curvature of the spherical mould surface is
positive everywhere, which is consistent with the Situation 1.
According to the Remark 3, we know that no wrinkling will
appear in the composite tape when:
Placement suitability criteria of composite tape for mould surface in automated tape placement
Table 2 Appropriate width of composite tape for spherical
mould surface.
Mould radius R1 (mm)
R1 < 992.4
992.4 6 R1 < 1015.4
1015.4 6 R1 < 2030.7
2030.7 6 R1 < 2076.9
2076.9 6 R1 < 4199.2
4199.2 6 R1 < 4242.6
R1 P 4242.6
1579
33
W2
< 8:24 106
g1 W
34
W2
< 3:45 107
g1 W
35
W
6 8R21
g1 W
32
Fig. 6
W2
< 1:44 108
g1 W
36
In summary, the appropriate tape width for the mould surface is 150 mm. In this case, no deposition error will appear in
the composite tape. Meanwhile, the placement efciency is
maintained.
During the actual placement process as illustrated in
Fig. 6(a), the composite tape of 150 mm width is adopted.
As can be seen in Fig. 6(b) and (c), the conformance of the
1580
P. Zhang et al.
Fig. 7
Placement suitability criteria of composite tape for mould surface in automated tape placement
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technique for composites. Part II: rolls coordinate generation for
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2007;37(1):4750 Chinese.
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Composite tape placement apparatus with natural path generation
means. United States patent US 4696707. 1987 September 29.
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Shinnippon Koki Co., Ltd., Method for controlling tape afxing
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Zhang Peng is a Ph.D. student at School of Mechanical Science and
Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology. His
main research interest is path planning in automated placement process.
Sun Ronglei received the B.E. degree in industrial automation and the
Ph.D. degree in mechatronic engineering from the Huazhong
University of Science and Technology (HUST), Wuhan, China, in
1985 and 2002, respectively. Currently he is a professor in School of
Mechanical Science and Engineering, HUST. His research interests
include robotics, manufacturing automation and intelligent control.