At the present time, the weight and durability benefits of carbon fibre composites cannot be provided without very large manufacturing cost premiums. The new processing techniques of liquid and resin film moulding have only been proven to be justifiable for complex high value parts as result of high materials and labour costs to manufacture the carbon fibre preform prior to moulding. In a three year project the possibilities of automation of carbon fibre preforms using low cost materials were investigated. The manufacture of unidirectional tape using a binder coated thread was developed to form low cost feed-stock for a preform laminating machine. The machine was conceived, designed and built to lay single curvature parts to net shapes with tailored thickness up to a size of 3M by 1.5 M. It has achieved a net laminating rate of 30 kg per hour. For the attachment of details such as stiffeners, the techniques of stitching and pinning were developed into effective techniques. Components were processed by the Resin Transfer Moulding technique to a fibre volume fraction of 56 %. Cost modelling of the manufacture of a range of sizes of skin components showed a reduction of between 30 % and 53 % for an aileron and outer wing skin respectively. It was demonstrated that the automated equipment has sufficient throughput to be viable for manufacture multiple parts using a single machine. The mechanical performance of manufactured components is being investigated alongside the manufacture of large demonstrator aerospace components.


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    Title :

    Automation of carbon fibre prefrom manufacture for aerospace applications


    Additional title:

    Die Automatisierung der Preform-Herstellung für Anwendungen in der Luft- und Raumfahrt


    Contributors:
    Mills, A. (author) / Backhouse, R. (author)


    Publication date :

    1998


    Size :

    8 Seiten, 6 Bilder, 5 Quellen


    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    Print


    Language :

    English




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