Automated manufacture of optimised shape-adaptive composite hydrofoils with curvilinear fibre paths for improved bend-twist performance

摘要

Composite marine propellers improve hydrodynamic efficiency by inducing bend-twist coupling and allowing for passive pitch changes. One critical limitation, however, is the extent to which a composite propeller blade can deform and cause a pitch change without incurring structural failure. Recent numerical studies showed that curvilinear tows could improve the structural response of a composite blade by lowering its deflection or stress and strain required to induce a pitch change, but no experimental validation has been carried out before. The current study, thus, presents the manufacture of composite sandwich hydrofoils made with steered tows using automated fibre placement and validates the curvilinear tow benefits. Two hydrofoils were optimised with straight and curved fibre path layups, respectively and were manufactured for mechanical testing. The manufacturing complications arising from steering curvilinear tows in a three-dimensional convex mould are also discussed in the paper. The study found that significant tow buckling occurred near the tool cavity edge due to excessive steering radius during manufacture. The follow-up structural cantilevered tests showed that the experimental results were consistent with the FE predictions despite the presence of some manufacturing defects. The experiment agreed that the hydrofoil manufactured with curved tows achieved a similar tip twist but a significant reduction in deflection and critical principal strains compared to the hydrofoil made with straight tows. The use of a foam core reduced the overall weight of the sandwich hydrofoils by about 25 compared to that of a fully-carbon composite hydrofoil, and the numerical analysis showed that the core shear failure induced by transverse shear stresses was unlikely to occur.