Thermal Analysis of in-situ Thermoplastic Composite Tape Laying

This paper presents analytical and numerical thermal analysis for melting and consolidating impregnated composite tapes in the presence of a localized heat source. This analysis also leads to the prediction of the processing window for a given tape-laying configuration. Heat of melting/solidification is included in the form of a heat generation term. A separation of variables method is employed to solve the governing equations ana lytically. In the numerical analysis, the governing equations are discretized using a non uniform mesh and are solved using a finite difference approach. The processing parame ters, such as consolidation speed, heat intensity, heat source width, etc., as well as material properties are incorporated within the analysis. The results show large thermal gradients in the vicinity of the consolidation point. The error between the analytical solu tion and the numerical result is found to be 3 % for the maximum temperature, and the maximum error for the temperature over the entire domain is observed to be 7%. The effects of processing speed, heat intensity, and the width of the local heat source are inves tigated, and the overall optimization of the process is discussed.