Instant geodesic draping for optimization and path-planning and its application to incremental composite sheet forming

Technical textiles and their use in composites are crucial for many high-performance applications. Utilizing them in applications dominated by iteration and individualization requires flexible manufacturing processes. One such process is Incremental Sheet Forming (ISF), the 3D-Printing of forming processes, which is currently being adapted to composites. Enabling ISF, and other dieless processes, and leveraging their flexibility requires optimization and path-planning tools. Such tools must consider material behavior, which in turn necessitates the use of simulation. While highly sophisticated methods for increasingly accurate modeling have been developed, the speed requirements of CAM workflows and optimizations have kept simple yet efficient approximations relevant, the most prominent being kinematic draping algorithms. This work presents a novel heat-method based alternative that globally computes fabric draping under an assumption of uniform tow distances. This assumption makes it especially well-suited for the subsequently implemented drape-aware ISF paths. Additionally, the developed algorithm is highly computationally efficient, which is harnessed for visualization and optimization. While these are only explored computationally, the path-planning is employed to produce and compare a demonstrator part in a double sided ISF process. The initial results for the draping algorithm show an up to 80x speed increase compared to kinematic draping. This allows for real-time draping visualization and sub-minute optimization. The demonstrator part proves that the derived paths can counteract wrinkling, an important failure mode observed with conventional strategies. These results demonstrate the great potential of geodesic draping for ISF in particular and flexible manufacturing, optimization and visualization tasks in general.

Subjects

Computer aided manufacturing

Fiber reinforced plastic

Incremental Sheet Forming

Optimization

Simulation

Tool path

DDC Class

629.1: Aviation

Lizenz

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Publication version

publishedVersion

Name

1-s2.0-S0010448526001259-main.pdf

Type

Main Article

Size

5.25 MB

Format

Adobe PDF

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Instant geodesic draping for optimization and path-planning and its application to incremental composite sheet forming