Research On Integration Technique Of Creels And Fiber Placment Head For Automated Fiber Placement Machine

The composite materials have excellent performance, which determines that they will have huge development space in the aerospace field. While the composite molding techniques start late in our country, the lack of advanced composite molding techniques has become one of the main reasons to impede the spread and application of composite materials now. Automated Fiber Placement(AFP), as one kind of advanced composites forming technologies, has excellent adaptability; it can accomplish laying of various kinds of complex curved surface. At the present stage, the Automated Fiber Placement equipment, which our country had invented, has not yet been able to be applied to commercial production for their poor quality. On the basis of investigating documents at home and abroad throughly, This thesis puts forward the idea of developing the fiber laying equipment of integrating the creel and head according to the problems, such as long fiber tow path and fiber tows tangling easily, which the fiber placement machines have in present.According to the modularization idea, the operating principle of the creel and head was analyzed and the requirements of each module were gotten in detail, which lays a foundation for the design of the fiber placement head. In the light of the existing problems of domestic prototype and the theoretical analysis results, the design scheme of fiber layout, modules layout and all the modules in the head according to the request of laying 8 tows, was put out, and the facilitation of installation and adjustment was designed. The distribution of the creel, tension control mechanism, film collect mechanism, steering mechanism were designed according to the requirements of 4 tows. After a variety of design schemes of each module were achieved, all the schemes were analyzed based on the actual demand such as gantry connection and the optimal solution was chose. All schemes were objectivized by calculation and analysis, and the 3D models of the creel and fiber placement laying head were set up.After the 3D model of Automated Fiber Placement machinery has been established, using the finite element software to do the statics analysis and modal analysis, in the process of analysis the joint surfaces of the linear guide have been processed. According to the analysis result, the structural improvement scheme was put forward. And finally through the redesign of creel support and gantry, the stiffness of the machinery has been doubled and the first resonance frequency was achieved a 50% increase.According to the requirement of motion control of the Automated Fiber Placement machinery, the IPC + UMAC control scheme was chosen, and the overall control scheme of system was designed. The mechanical parts, electrical control cabinet, and pneumatic circuit of the machinery were completed.The test run of the Automated Fiber Placement prototype was accomplished. It has compact structure and excellent functions, and has obvious improvement compared with the existing prototype in many sides. In addition, it solved the typical problems that exist in non-integrative machinery such as easy winding, tension fluctuation. Fiber laying experiment was carried out on the prototype. It proved that the driving performance of each shaft is excellent, the design of all the modules is reasonable and all the modules can meet the corresponding function demand properly.