AMD Online Magazine: Simulation for laying composite material

Aerospace Manufacturing and Design Online Magazine posted an article on SPRING Technologies to outline the result of several years’ collaboration with major aerospace customers, NCSIMUL Machine 9.1 can replicate material laying processes executed by numerical control (NC) machines.

This machining simulation software decodes NC programs, representing the machine environment in 3D to identify and analyze programming errors and collisions. A Composite option enables a dynamic representation of fiber ribbon laying, depicting the 3D form of the carbon fiber. Positioning of each fiber in the ribbon is managed independently.

The software alerts users to issues specific to the way composites are processed and liable to occur in machining. Alerts include fiber steering angle errors, twisting of taut fiber between the head and the position on the spool, fiber tension issues including speed disparities between fibers or sudden changes of direction that can create backwards laying.

Analysis functions can send information to the process planning department and the design office before going live. Analysis can be for the length of the laid material, layer thickness, fiber ribbon intersection angle, and aperture radius. The section-plane function gives insights into layering or possible holes in the material. At any time, the fiber path, or the end result of the material laying generated on the tooling in CAD, can be exported.

The software considers the shape of the initial tooling and the tension applied to the fibers. Fast algorithms enable fiber laying simulation with performances of 300m/min on a conventional CAD workstation.

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