Design and Manufacture of Mould Free Fibre Reinforced Laminates with Compound Curvature

Abstract

Abstract Composite manufacturing demands mould tooling to produce dimensionally accurate parts, adding substantial capital costs to their production. Recent developments in advanced manufacturing of fibre-reinforced polymer composite elements have seen the implementation of mould-free technologies that can produce complex shaped parts off a flat tool. This paper presents eccentric fibre prestress as a novel mould-free method for producing curvatures within carbon fibre and glass fibre laminates. Tailoring the flexural rigidity along the primary orientation of the laminate is shown to result in a complex, compound curvature profile with high accuracy. An analytical model based on Euler-Bernoulli beam theory is proposed and demonstrated to correlate closely with the experiential laminates. An inverse design approach based on a Genetic Algorithm is demonstrated to design a reasonable laminate configuration to achieve the top surface of a NACA 4412 aerofoil section using the proposed eccentric fibre prestress.