FROM AS-DESIGNED TO AS-BUILT ANALYSIS USING AN MULTISCALE APPROACH AND MODEL UPDATE

Abstract

MAAXIMUS is a European funded project enhancing process and evaluation techniques in order to maximize process efficiency at reduced costs and production time due to less material consumption, higher reproducibility, less energy, less waste and less rework. The methodology presented in this paper focuses on the automated fibre placement (AFP) technique in particular on the assessment of deviations within the composite laminate, e.g. fibre curvature, gaps and overlaps. The goal is to determine the effective material properties in terms of stiffness and strength that are related to these manufacturing deviations, to enable a so called as-built structural analysis and evaluation. A multiscale approach is exploited, which is dedicated to assess the difference in mechanical performance of as-designed and as-built structures. The effective stiffness and strength are calculated by numerical analysis on the local level and homogenized for the macro level. This way the macro level structural response can be calculated computationally efficient. The results give evidence that the investigated manufacturing deviations have a significant effect on the stiffness and in particular on the strength. A decrease in stiffness and strength for an increasing fibre curvature has been observed from the finite element analyses. The model update, performed on the overall structure by assigning the effective properties to respective regions, reveals a change in the structural behaviour compared to the reference. This study is not exhaustive, further investigations and validation with experimental data is to be done.