Automated fiber placement (AFP), also known as advanced fiber placement, is an advanced method of manufacturing
composite material
A composite material (also called a composition material or shortened to composite, which is the common name) is a material which is produced from two or more constituent materials. These constituent materials have notably dissimilar chemical or ...
s. These materials, which offer lighter weight with equivalent or greater strength than metals, are increasingly used in
airframes and other industrial products.
Fiber Placement is an automated composites manufacturing process of heating and compacting
synthetic resin
Synthetic resins are industrially produced resins, typically viscous substances that convert into rigid polymers by the process of curing. In order to undergo curing, resins typically contain reactive end groups, such as acrylates or epoxides. ...
pre-impregnated non-metallic fibers on typically complex tooling
mandrels. The fiber usually comes in the form of what are referred to as "tows". A tow is typically a bundle of carbon fibers impregnated with
epoxy resin and is approximately wide by thick and comes on a spool. Fiber placement machines (FPM) generally have a capacity of 12 to 32 tows or when placing all tows at a time in a course, have respective course widths of 1.5 in to 4 in. The tows are fed to a heater and compaction roller on the FPM head and through robotic type machine movements, are placed in courses across a tool surface. Courses are generally placed in orientations of 0°, +45°, -45° and 90° to build up plies which in combination, have good properties in all directions. Fiber placement machines are generally rated in (lb/h), (lb/min) or weight per time.
Description
Automated fiber placement (AFP) machines are a recent development of composite manufacturing technologies meant to increase rate and precision in the production of advanced composite parts. AFP machines place fiber reinforcements on moulds or mandrels in an automatic fashion and use a number of separate small width tows (typically or less) of
thermoset
In materials science, a thermosetting polymer, often called a thermoset, is a polymer that is obtained by irreversibly hardening (" curing") a soft solid or viscous liquid prepolymer ( resin). Curing is induced by heat or suitable radiation ...
or
thermoplastic
A thermoplastic, or thermosoft plastic, is any plastic polymer material that becomes pliable or moldable at a certain elevated temperature and solidifies upon cooling.
Most thermoplastics have a high molecular weight. The polymer chains associate ...
pre-impregnated materials to form composite layups. This technology allows better precision and increased deposition rates when compared with experienced laminators but, while allowing for more complex layup geometries than Automated Tape Laying (ATL) it does not reach the same deposition rates. Automated fiber placement can be used to manufacture complex structures that are not possible to manufacture with any other methods.
See also
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Composite material
A composite material (also called a composition material or shortened to composite, which is the common name) is a material which is produced from two or more constituent materials. These constituent materials have notably dissimilar chemical or ...
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Tailored Fiber Placement (TFP)
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Ingersoll Machine Tools
References
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Composite material fabrication techniques