GOALI/Collaborative Research: Fundamental Study of Impacts of Manufacturing Processes and Automation on Material Properties of Composite Products

纤维增强聚合物复合材料由于其高刚度和高强度重量比而越来越多地用于广泛的工业，例如运输、船舶、风能、航空航天和建筑。复合材料层压板制造的自动化有助于满足对复合材料日益增长的需求，并有望彻底改变依赖复合材料的行业。然而，现有的几个铺叠自动化系统过于昂贵，并且没有针对产品质量进行充分优化。该研究旨在建立一个系统的框架，以帮助解决复合材料层压板制造自动化，监测和控制方面的关键挑战。该框架将建立必要的基本理解之间的关系，复合材料成分的性能，主要复合材料制造工艺和自动化，和制造的产品质量。这些新知识将有助于提高复合材料层压板制造的生产率和质量。这项研究的结果将有助于美国复合材料制造商，并使美国经济和社会受益。该GOALI研究采用多学科方法（涉及固体力学，复合材料工程，控制理论和机器人技术）来实现研究目标。此外，它将研究目标与工业需求相结合，有助于扩大代表性不足的群体在研究中的参与，并加强工程教育。这项研究将填补制造参数与层压材料的温度和时间依赖性特性（粘弹性和粘性）之间复杂相互作用及其对复合材料层压材料特性（即，排列成呈现特定机械性能的多方向薄片的叠层）。研究团队将（1）建立多物理场制造过程模型，以预测过程参数对制造诱发缺陷和最终产品质量的影响，并进行实验验证模型;（2）通过制造动力学模拟，了解质量检测和最佳控制在提高生产率方面的作用;以及（3）获得关于如何控制物理过程以确保产品质量的知识，作为生产实践的指南。

Fiber reinforced polymer composites, by virtue of their high stiffness and high strength-to-weight ratio, are increasingly used in a wide range of industries such as transportation, marine, wind energy, aerospace, and construction. Automation of composite laminates manufacturing is instrumental in meeting the growing demand for composites and promises to revolutionize composite-dependent industries. However, the few existing layup automation systems are prohibitively expensive and are not fully optimized for product quality. This Grant Opportunity for Academic Liaison with Industry (GOALI) research aims to establish a systematic framework that will assist in solving the critical challenges in automation, monitoring and control for composite laminates manufacturing. The framework will establish the necessary fundamental understanding of relationships among composite constituents' properties, principal composite manufacturing processes and automation, and fabricated product quality. The new knowledge will help increase productivity and quality of composite laminates manufacturing. Results from this research will assist U.S. composite manufacturers and benefit the U.S. economy and society. This GOALI research employs a multi-disciplinary approach (involving solid mechanics, composites engineering, control theory and robotics) to achieve the research objectives. In addition, it incorporates research goals with industrial needs and helps broaden the participation of underrepresented groups in research and enhance engineering education. This research will fill the knowledge gap in the complex interactions between fabrication parameters and laminas' temperature- and time-dependent properties (viscoelasticity and tackiness) and their impact on the properties of composite laminates (i.e., a stack of multi-directional laminas arranged to exhibit specific mechanical properties). The research team will (1) create multi-physics manufacturing process models to predict impacts of process parameters on manufacturing induced defects and final product quality, and conduct experiments to verify the models; (2) gain an understanding on the roles of quality inspection and optimal control in increasing productivity through manufacturing dynamics simulations; and (3) obtain the knowledge on how to control the physical process to ensure the product quality as a guideline for manufacturing practices.