Infrared heating system based on automated fiber placement for thermoplastic composites

Abstract

In order to ensure the full melting of the thermoplastic composites (TPC) prepreg in the process of automated fiber placement (AFP) and offer the potential to realize the in-situ consolidation for TPC, it is necessary to control the temperature of the prepreg in AFP. Aiming at the processing speed will be changed within the larger scope, an infrared heating technology with fast response rate and efficient was proposed. Based on the analysis of the heat transfer process between the infrared heat source and the layers, the control equation of dynamic temperature was put forward and the matching relationship between the radiation intensity and laying speed was established. Based on the AFP platform, the infrared heating system which adopts the feedforward control method was constructed and the corresponding control strategy was formulated according to the dynamic thermostatic control equation to realize the heating temperature of prepreg controlled accurately. The experiment results show that the infrared heating thermostatic control system can meet the requirement of dynamic thermostatic control in the condition of variable speed and the compressive strength and the interlaminar shear strength for AFP component are closed to the moulded component.

Keywords

• thermoplastic composites
• automated fiber placement
• infrared heating
• feedforward control
• <i>in-situ</i> consolidation