Comparison of fibre angles between mechanical draped carbon fibres and draping simulation

Abstract

Within this research an experimental set up to drape carbon fibres mechanically was established. The set up generated lower standard deviations than the manually draped fibres. Likewise the deviations between simulation and reality were much lower but still show errors due to incorrect draping. Also the evaluation of the comparison could further be developed and shows trends for a good comparison criterion. Knowing these circumstances a lot of improvement of the experimental setup can be done to prevent incorrect draping. Therefore the kinematic endeffector has to be further developed and also the strategy for the vacuum grippers has to be improved. The kinematic of the ribs should be changed by generating a non-consistent curvature along them. This would lead to a better fit of the endeffector to the tooling and therefore to a reduction of non-controllable draping behaviour by dropping the cut piece. By changing the force induced by the vacuum grippers the gliding of the cut piece could be more controllable. Also the realization of the seed-point from the draping simulation could be more precise. Another improvement could be achieved by changing the draping simulation and the resulting flattened cut piece. Since the simulation was production-oriented for manually draping the seed point and the fibre orientation could be changed to suit the kinematic endeffector better. The material itself could also be changed to fit the mechanically draped process better. The material was impregnated with a binder and therefore relatively stiff. If the binder would be excluded the material would be more fragile but wouldn't anymore tend to generate folds.