THERMAL BEHAVIOR OF TAPES IN AUTOMATED TAPE PLACEMENT (ATP) PROCESS-MICRO ANALYSIS

摘要

A numerical model is presented to analyze the thermal behavior of the tapes at microscale during automated tape placement (ATP) process. A 3D geometrical model is developed considering the real microstructure. Ray tracing is used for the detection of the fibers impacted by the infrared laser. A heat source distribution is presented to show the difference between multiple tape microstructures. Finite element is used to solve this transient heat transfer problem of laser heating the tape for 25 milliseconds (ms) and then followed by subsequent cooling for next 25 ms. The temperature variation along the depth of the tape is presented and the depth at which the maximum temperature is present that differs depending on the microstructure. Moreover, the surface temperature variation along the time period of 50 ms are compared with the experimental results performed by an in-house instrumented bench.