Trajectory Computation On Robotic Fiber Placement For Composite Structures

Automatic Fiber Placement(FP)is a new manufacture technique to produce composite materials. FP has been widely applied in aerospace and aviation industry to produce complicated shaped components in North America and Europe. In China,FP study is just beginning now. The path planning of Automatic Fiber Placement of composite materials is one of the key technologies in FP. In this paper,path planning of Automatic Fiber Placement is investigated, which builds the base of the control for automated tow placements. The main contents are listed as follows:(1) By using some discrete points, a novel path generation algorithm of fitting a surface curve on fiber placement surface is investigated. At first, the discrete points are mapped onto the parameter plane, and then a B-spline is approximated on parameter plane by using these mapped discrete points. Finally, the planar curve is mapped onto the mould surface.(2) The optimization of fiber placement paths is investigated. Two kinds of algorithm are brought out to meet different requirements of initial path. When there is one initial path, we can offset the initial one to get the rest paths; when there are two initial paths, we can get the rest paths by using their medial curve.(3) A path generating algorithm of local changeable is proposed. For introducing several free parameters into the method, we can modify the curve's shape locally or globally. Moreover, the resulted placement path can reflect the curvature of the mould surface and change the fiber's direction locally to satisfy better both fiber placement and surface geometry.(4) Targeting the canal surface, the generalized helix algorithm of genenrating the FP path is proposed. By given the angle relationship between the corresponding points of helix and axis, a first order differential system is constructed, by solving which we can get the helix path of the canal surface. And then, with the average initial value, we can get the rest helix FP paths.At last the aogorithm is verified and implemented on Matlab and CATIA V5.