This presentation was held at the 2020 NAFEMS UK Conference "Inspiring Innovation through Engineering Simulation". The conference covered topics ranging from traditional FEA and CFD, to new and emerging areas including artificial intelligence, machine learning and EDA.

Resource Abstract

Composite technologies promise large environmental advantages. Looking at carbon fibre composites, the amount of CO2 emitted in making the fibres is 20 Kg per Kg of fibre. However, the expected CO2 savings for an aircraft are 1400 Kg per Kg of mass reduction, explaining the reason for aerospace adopting the material in large amounts. The advantages for automotive are less obvious at 50 kg per kg of fibre and there are significant issues with manufacturing like production speed and cost which have slowed adoption. However, there are still significant incremental improvements which can be made, reducing waste and further optimising structures.

The area this presentation will cover is fibre steering. Traditional carbon fibre constructions have used fibres laid in straight lines or with small amounts of curvature. Also plies get cut out of sheets of material with ensuing material waste. This puts a limit on what can be achieved. Technologies such as automated tape laying (ATL) can put in small amounts of curvature but tailored fibre placement and continuous tow shearing enable creation of high-quality parts with small radii and minimal waste. These technologies promise up to 38% saving in mass of an aircraft wing skin. As well as structural optimisation steered fibre technologies can also be used for aero-elastic tailoring of wings and propeller blades. This controls the relationship between wing lift and torsion, enabling improved performance over a range of air speeds. The problem is that analysis tools are not available to facilitate the design using these manufacturing methods. The presentation will look at the design decision process and how optimisation can be used to enable use of these new technologies. It will also show how analysis can facilitate further optimisation and broaden the application of steered fibre composites to other industries like automotive and renewable energy.