Design of Automated Robotic System for Draping Prepreg Composite Fabrics

Ellekilde, Lars‐Peter; Wilm, Jakob; Nielsen, Ole Wennerberg; Krogh, Christian; Kristiansen, Ewa; Gunnarsson, Gudmundur Geir; Stenvang, Thor Stærk; Jakobsen, Johnny; Kristiansen, Morten; Glud, Jeppe Aagaard; Hannemose, Morten; Aanæs, Henrik; Kruijk, Joakim de; Sveidahl, I.; Ikram, Ataul Aziz; Petersen, Henrik Gordon

doi:10.1017/s0263574720000193

Cited by 12 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…This is a difficult, time consuming process that requires great precision to avoid defects within the finished product. A research group has been investigating a possible solution for this [45] but further investigation into automated draping is required.…”

Section: Challenges and Future Research Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Overview of Automated Manufacturing for Composite Materials

Loeliger

Yang

Bomphray³

2021

2021 26th International Conference on Automation and Computing (ICAC)

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This paper aims to present an overview of composite materials with the focus on automated manufacturing. First, it provides an initial understanding of what composite materials are, their different classifications and their advantages and disadvantages. Then, manufacturing automation is discussed along with the different classifications of robot that are commonly used and the advantages and disadvantages of automation. Market analysis shows that three industries of interest due to their advancements in composite and automated manufacturing are the automotive, aerospace and marine industries. A review of companies currently implementing composite materials and their use of automated manufacturing within these specific industries has therefore been carried out. Finally, research challenges are highlighted, along with directions for future research.

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Section: Challenges and Future Research Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Overview of Automated Manufacturing for Composite Materials

Loeliger

Yang

Bomphray³

2021

2021 26th International Conference on Automation and Computing (ICAC)

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“…An overview of the FlexDraper system can be found in the paper by Ellekilde et al [1]. The core of the robot cell is a 6-axis industrial robot with a specially designed end effector consisting of a grid of actuated suction cups.…”

Section: Automatic Draping and Debulkingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A particularly costly step is the manual draping or lay-up of the fiber plies in the mold. To this end, the FlexDraper research project [1,2] seeks to develop an automatic ply layup solution for the aerospace industry which has the potential of decreasing the manufacturing costs and at the same time increasing the part quality. The robot system has the ability to manipulate and drape entire plies of woven prepreg fabric onto double-curved molds of low curvature.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Will it Crease or Cease? A study of debulking of air pockets in automated prepreg composite layup

Krogh

Jakobsen

Wilm

2020

Composites Part A: Applied Science and Manufacturing

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Automatic draping of carbon-fiber prepreg plies for the aerospace industry is a promising technique for lowering the manufacturing costs and to this end, a thorough in-process quality control is crucial. In this paper, out-of-plane defects in the layup are investigated. After draping, air pockets are occasionally encountered. The question is, if such apparent defects can be mitigated sufficiently during vacuum debulking. The 3D topology is measured by means of a structuredlight 3D scanner and air pockets are segmented. An approximate mass-spring ply model is used to study the behavior of the air pockets during application of vacuum pressure. The model is computationally fast and will indicate online whether the air pocket will be removed or manual intervention is required. Upon comparing the model predictions with experimental data, it is shown that the system is capable of correctly predicting 13 out of 14 air pockets in a test layup.

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“…The solution of automated handling dry textiles to double curvature mould were verified both in offline programming environment and an industrial scale manufacturing demonstrator. Ellekilde et al [14] designed a novel draping tool with up to 120 suction cups, which has been tested on draping large aircraft part prepreg. Krogh et al [23] researched the moving trajectories of suction cup gripper for draping plies with establishing cable model.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A cooperative mobile robot and manipulator system (Co-MRMS) for transport and lay-up of fibre plies in modern composite material manufacture

Yang

Wong

et al. 2021

Int J Adv Manuf Technol

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Composite materials are widely used in industry due to their light weight and specific performance. Currently, composite manufacturing mainly relies on manual labour and individual skills, especially in transport and lay-up processes, which are time consuming and prone to errors. As part of a preliminary investigation into the feasibility of deploying autonomous robotics for composite manufacturing, this paper presents a case study that investigates a cooperative mobile robot and manipulator system (Co-MRMS) for material transport and composite lay-up, which mainly comprises a mobile robot, a fixed-base manipulator and a machine vision sub-system. In the proposed system, marker-based and Fourier transform-based machine vision approaches are used to achieve high accuracy capability in localisation and fibre orientation detection respectively. Moreover, a particle-based approach is adopted to model material deformation during manipulation within robotic simulations. As a case study, a vacuum suction-based end-effector model is developed to deal with sagging effects and to quickly evaluate different gripper designs, comprising of an array of multiple suction cups. Comprehensive simulations and physical experiments, conducted with a 6-DOF serial manipulator and a two-wheeled differential drive mobile robot, demonstrate the efficient interaction and high performance of the Co-MRMS for autonomous material transportation, material localisation, fibre orientation detection and grasping of deformable material. Additionally, the experimental results verify that the presented machine vision approach achieves high accuracy in localisation (the root mean square error is 4.04 mm) and fibre orientation detection (the root mean square error is 1.84∘) and enables dealing with uncertainties such as the shape and size of fibre plies.

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Design of Automated Robotic System for Draping Prepreg Composite Fabrics

Cited by 12 publications

References 19 publications

An Overview of Automated Manufacturing for Composite Materials

An Overview of Automated Manufacturing for Composite Materials

Will it Crease or Cease? A study of debulking of air pockets in automated prepreg composite layup

A cooperative mobile robot and manipulator system (Co-MRMS) for transport and lay-up of fibre plies in modern composite material manufacture

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