Meeting the volumes, cost and technical challenges for further penetration of composites in airframes

Transcription

1 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

2 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

3 Composites in a modern civil airframe A350XWB Visit us Stand D125

4 Hand Layup Source: Composites World Visit us Stand D125

5 Automated Fibre placement (AFP/ATL) Source: mtorres Visit us Stand D125

6 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

7 Visit us Stand D125

8 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

9 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 Visit us Stand D125

10 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.

11 3D Weaving Carbon fibre weaving on a rapier loom (2014) 3D Weaving on a 4 x 4 shuttle loom (1990s) Multi-insertion 3D weaving (2015) Visit us Stand D125

12 3D weaving 3D woven seat frame 3Dwoven fan blade exhibited at JEC Visit us Stand D125 3D woven preform for nacelle structure: INTERTEX/Sigmatex

13 Radial Braiding Cruciform with metal insert

14 Braiding complex shapes Automotive cantrail

15 complex multi-axial winding

16 Robotic 3D Fibre Placement

17 Automated dry fibre lay-up

18 Bias fibre placement

19 Tufting to join bias tows with 3D fabric

20 High speed robot for fibre and patch placement

21 Non-crimp biaxial, tufted

22 Compression Moulding of Multi- Architecture Composites (CMMC) DCFP + Textile preform Led by Prof Nick Warrior at Nottingham Visit us Stand D125

23 Resin Infusion of aircraft parts Pressure bulkhead, cargo door Source: Drycomposites.com C-series wing Visit us Stand D125

24 Discussion Dry fibre preforming sits neatly between AFP/ATL processes and discontinuous preformng processes (F3P, DCFP) Judicious combination of 3D preforms and discontinuous preforms processed by compression moulding Visit us Stand D125