Research on trajectory planning of non-developable surface for automated tape placement processing of composite

Abstract Tape placement manufacturing process, as one of the automated forming technologies for composite material, not only substantially improves the productivity of composite component and reduces the cost of production significantly but also raises the reliability and stability of composite structure. Automated tape placement technology is mainly applied for manufacturing the fuselage and wing panel of airplane characterized by small curvature and large size. For these kinds of structural components with a non-developable surface, trajectory planning by “natural path” method could reduce the internal stress and improve the quality of composite products to a certain extent but not be optimized by quantitative characterization. On the basis of preliminary work, the theoretical model of “unnatural degree” (UD) is introduced in the first step, which could characterize the tensile and shear strain of the laying tape quantitatively. Secondly, by adjusting the iterative step and laying direction to diminish the UD, local stress could be softened in order to optimize the laying track. Ultimately, the simulation model of the non-developable surface is established under the Matlab software environment, and the “variable step-angle” algorithm is adopted to verify the adjustment effect of the tape-laying track.