Temperature Field During Automated Fiber Placement For Thermoplastic Composite

The Automated Fiber Placement (AFP) of thermoplastic composite (TPC) realizes in-situ crystallization layer by layer and offers the potential to increase production rate and significantly reduces manufacturing cost when processing of large parts. Desired quality of composite parts depends intensively on the thermal history of the AFP, the heater moving with the AFP head and the case of layer continuously being added on bottom prepreg were simulated by the ANSYS software to obtain the temperature field distribution in the laminate. At the same time, a real-time temperature measurement system based on WinCC flexible was established, aiming at acquiring and memorizing the temperature during the experiments. The results show that the temperature curves of each layer appear several peaks and the peaks are gradually increasing with the increase of the temperature of hot gas, the higher the temperature of hot gas is, the bigger the peak temperature difference is and the smaller the difference between thermocouple and simulation is. The finite element simulation results are verified to be correct by comparing the peak temperature of the experimental results with the finite element simulation results. The results show that peaks are gradually decreasing with the increase of the speed of roll. In order to meet the requirements of the component, the maximum speed is 1. 2m/min when the temperature of hot gas is 600 degrees C.