Quality Controlled UD Tape Production for the Individualised Production of Load Optimised Thermoplastic Composite Parts

Abstract:

A flexible and individual component manufacturing process for thermoplastic composites (TPC) has been developed at the Institut fuer Kunststoffverarbeitung in Industrie und Handwerk an der RWTH Aachen (Institute of Plastics Processing (IKV) at RWTH Aachen University). The process consists of a quality controlled tape production and a combined forming and joining process with additive manufactured functional structures. This paper describes the requirements for the unidirectional (UD) tape properties and the quality controlled tape production line in order to allow for a flexible and individual component manufacturing of load optimised thermoplastic composite parts. Besides the UD tape geometry and fibre impregnation quality an even fibre distribution over the width of the UD tape is an important characteristic. Results of investigations regarding the online measured quality data (fibre distribution) and offline measured UD tape properties (local fibre weight content) are presented and discussed.

• Periodical: Key Engineering Materials (Volume 742)
• Pages: 90-95
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/KEM.742.90
• Online since: July 2017
• Authors: Christian Hopmann*, Christian Beste, Markus Hildebrandt, Arne Boettcher, Kai Fischer
• Keywords: Fiber Content, Fiber Distribution, Optical Quality Control, Thermoplastic Composites, UD Tape

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