DESIGN, ANALYSIS AND DEVELOPMENT OF SPECIAL PURPOSE TOOLS FOR COMPOSITE MANUFACTURING EFFICIENCY IMPROVEMENT

Naveen Bharadishettar, Yadavalli Basavaraj

Abstract: Advanced materials are widely used in high performance structures that profit from their high strength; high stiffness and low weight .Composite products are realized using different manufacturing processes to meet the functional, production rate, size and shape of the part. Now days most of the industries are mainly focusing on improvements in manufacturing techniques to reduce efforts as well as material wastage. Wet layup, compression molding, resin transfer molding, filament winding, pultrusion are the some of the well established process in composites. The present work mainly focused on some of the improvements in layup process and filament winding process. In layup process improvements, design and development of special purpose tool for noodle preparation (i.e. Radius fillers) for composite T, I, H sections is carried out. Comparison made on the existing and proposed design for the feasibility. In filament winding process improvements, design and development of special purpose mandrel for complex shaped filament wound composite parts is carried out based on the industrialization concept. Later part of work extended to the study of impact of winding angle on the filament wound composite part using NASTRAN software.

Keywords: Layup, Noodle preparation (i.e. Radius fillers), Filament winding, Mandrel, Winding angle, NASTRAN.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.15623/ijret.2015.0407018