FILAMENT WINDING

FILAMENT WINDING

Filament winding involves the precise laying down of resinimpregnated reinforcement in the form of either rovings or tape onto a
mandrel.

It is a process for producing components with optimum properties

using continuous fibre reinforcement.

High structural efficiency can be obtained by orientating the

reinforcement to match the direction and magnitude of applied loads.

Examples of filament-wound composite components include pressure

vessels, drive shafts and pipes.

CARBON FIBRE EPOXY DRIVE SHAFT

GLASS FIBRE COMPOSITE TUBES

PRESSURE VESSEL

FILAMENT WINDING OF KEVLAR PRESSURE VESSEL

STORAGE TANK

GRE Pipe Fittings (Tee & elbow)

Filament Wound Carbon/Epoxy Pipe

While components do not necessarily have to be circular, these

tend to be the one most widely manufactured.

It is not possible to include undercuts, bosses and webs during

winding, but it is feasible to incorporate inserts.

The component size range is enormous, varying from smalldiameter tube to 40 m, 13 tonne wind turbine blades.

The process produces a high quality component, but it requires

a degree of automation for success.

It is then a quick, effective and consistent way to impregnate

and deposit large volume of material.

Winding Methods: There are two different winding

methods :
wet winding, in which the fibres are passed through a
resin bath and wound onto a rotating mandrel
prepreg winding, in which the preimpregnated fibre
tows are placed on the rotating mandrel.

Among these winding methods, wet winding is

more commonly used for manufacturing fibre
reinforced thermosetting matrix composite
cylinders.
Compared with prepreg winding, wet winding
has several advantages: low material cost;
short winding time; and the resin formulation
can be easily varied to meet specific
requirements.
Many notes discuss wet filament winding
process and the term "filament winding" is
thus referred to the wet winding process.

Winding Patterns
In filament winding, one can vary winding
tension, winding angle and/or resin content
in each layer of reinforcement until desired
thickness and strength of the composite are
achieved.
The properties of the finished composite
can be varied by the type of winding pattern
selected.

Three basic filament winding patterns are:

i)

Hoop Winding: It is known as girth or circumferential winding.

Strictly speaking, hoop winding is a high angle helical winding that approaches
an angle of 90 degrees.
Each full rotation of the mandrel advances the band delivery by one full
bandwidth as shown in Figure 1.

Fig 1 Circumferential or hoop winding

ii) Helical Winding:

In helical winding, mandrel rotates at a constant speed
while the fibre feed carriage transverses back and forth
at a speed regulated to generate the desired helical
angles as shown in figure 2.

Fig 2 Helical winding

iii) Polar Winding:

In polar winding, the fibre passes tangentially to the polar
opening at one end of the chamber, reverses direction, and
passes tangentially to the opposite side of the polar opening
at the other end.
In other words, fibres are wrapped from pole to pole, as the
mandrel arm rotates about the longitudinal axis as shown in
figure 3.
It is used to wind almost axial fibres on domed end type of
pressure vessels. On vessels with parallel sides, a subsequent
circumferential winding would be done.

Fig 3 Polar winding

In the above three, helical winding has great versatility.

Almost any combination of diameter and length may be
wound by trading off wind angle and circuits to close the
patterns.
Usually, all composite tubes and pressure vessels are
produced by means of helical winding.

MATERIALS

Any continuous reinforcing fibre can be filament wound,

and the process can be used to produce hybrid
structures by winding several different fibres in turn.

Reinforcement can be applied in the form of tapes rather

than rovings.

The rovings are normally impregnated with a

thermosetting resin before being wound.

Polyester and epoxy are the two most common resins

with others being used more specialist applications.

Fibre reinforced thermoplastic impregnated tape is now

also available.

With this material the resin needs to be simply softened

prior to winding.

ADVANTAGES

Large diameters
Large lengths
Accurate control of fibre emplacement
Complex geometry with multi-axis winding
head

DISADVANTAGES

Cylindrical symmetry
Expensive tooling
Slow Production rate without specialized
facility

FILAMENT WINDING MACHINES

FILAMENT WINDING
MACHINE