Principles Of Winding Elbows From Pre-Impregnated Carbon Fibers

Nowadays, technologies like winding, braiding or wrapping of high-strength fibers used for manufacturing composite materials are used by producers in almost all sectors. This thesis describes a method of the prepreg (pre-impregnated) carbon filament winding with regards to manufacturing and effective designing of curved rods (elbows). The process of winding fibers is known for a long time. However, until recently was this technology used especially in the field of textile engineering, braiding of ropes, hoses and similar parts from atypical sectors. The basic elements of traditional filament winding are a non-bearing mandrel and spools. In the studied case of winding, the mandrel stands on a place and the spools with fibers rotating around and simultaneously moving parallel to it. The fiber can be wound in helical, circumferential and polar pattern with geodesic or non-geodesic behavior. However, when winding profiles with curved shapes, there could be significant deviations between the real and desired winding angle, caused by the irregular distribution of fibers on the inner and outer tube radius. Therefore, the aim of this work is to describe this phenomenon and find out an optimal solution on how to assure the constant mechanical parameters through the entire shape. The process has been described analytically and also simulated with using specialized software CADWIND.