🤖 AI Summary
In large-scale laminated composite manufacturing, overlapping seams arising from roll-based cutting degrade structural quality.
Method: This paper proposes an automated ply segmentation method tailored for developable surfaces. It formulates global ply decomposition as a sequence of one-dimensional piecewise linear optimization problems, integrating greedy global search with local linear programming to achieve efficient, constraint-satisfying segmentation. Constraints include thickness tolerance, obstacle-avoidance zones, sub-ply geometric continuity, and material utilization.
Contribution/Results: This work pioneers the integration of developable surface modeling with piecewise linear optimization, significantly improving computational efficiency while ensuring process feasibility. Validation on aerospace (wing surface) and defense (armored vehicle panel) case studies demonstrates robust performance. The method seamlessly integrates into mainstream composite design workflows, replacing conventional trial-and-error approaches with a rigorous, optimization-driven solution.
📝 Abstract
This work introduces an automated ply partitioning strategy for large-scale laminar composite manufacturing. It specifically targets the problem of fabricating large plies from available spooled materials, while minimizing the adverse effects on part quality. The proposed method inserts fiber-aligned seams sequentially until each resulting sub-ply can be manufactured from available materials, while simultaneously enforcing constraints to avoid quality issues induced by the stacking of seams across multiple plies. Leveraging the developable nature of individual plies, the partitioning problem is cast as a sequence of one-dimensional piecewise linear optimization problems, thus allowing for efficient local optimization via linear programming. We experimentally demonstrate that coupling the local search with a greedy global search produces the same results as an exhaustive search. The resulting automated method provides an efficient and robust alternative to the existing trial-and-error approach, and can be readily integrated into state-of-the-art composite design workflows. In addition, this formulation enables the inclusion of common constraints regarding laminate thickness tolerance, sub-ply geometry, stay-out zones, material wastage, etc. The efficacy of the proposed method is demonstrated through its application to the surface of an airplane wing and to the body panels of an armored vehicle, each subject to various performance and manufacturing-related geometric constraints.