Manufacturing a carbon/epoxy NACA 23018 airfoil skin using a circular braiding machine: experimental and numerical study

In the interest of reducing the weight and also cost of blade skins, various automatic preform manufacturing processes were developed including tape laying, filament winding and braiding. Among them, the circular braiding process was found to be an efficient method in producing seamless preforms on mandrels with various geometries. In this regard, an attempt was made to produce a carbon fiber reinforced composite with the shape of NACA 23018 airfoil using a circular braiding machine. Thus, suitable wooden mandrels were manufactured using NACA 23018 airfoil coordinates, which were obtained by assuming the perimeter of 20 cm. Furthermore, both biaxially and triaxially braided preforms were produced and subsequently impregnated with epoxy resin through an appropriate fabrication method. To assess their performance, four-point bending test was carried out on samples. Ultimately, the elastic response of braided composite airfoils was predicted using a meso-scale finite element modeling and was validated with experimental results.