Computer aided path design for filament winding torus

Abstract

The torus is a promisingly potential alternative to traditionally cylindrical pressure vessels due to its capability to store more hydrogen energy within limited space. Constant angle winding is widely used in practical filament winding. Hence, it is necessary to study constant angle winding on the torus. This paper presents constant winding angle curve on torus, a new winding trajectory, and gives a sufficient and necessary condition that makes it nonslip and non-bridging, and a computational formula for determining the lower bound of the winding angle of stable constant winding angle curve. By combining with semi-geodesics, we propose an integration design method for winding pattern and develop a computer aided path design system for filament winding torus, which can design constant angle winding pattern or approximate equilibrium winding for toroidal composite pressure vessels. Since our approach uses constant winding angle curve and integration trajectories besides semi-geodesics, our method has more design space for optimizing fiber path, and outperforms the existing methods.