SYSTÈME ET PROCÉDÉ PERMETTANT DE DÉTERMINER LA DIRECTION ET L'ESPACEMENT DE CHEMINS DE FIBRES POUR UN PLI COMPOSITE

摘要

A method (100) of determining fibers paths (314) for a composite ply (202) includes generating a triangulated surface (218) of the composite ply (202), and defining a first unit vector field establishing a 0-degree direction (302) for the triangulated surface. A second unit vector field (306) is defined by rotating, through specified fiber angles measured relative to the 0-degree direction, the first unit vector field about surface normals of the triangulated surface. A third unit vector field representing a gradient (308) direction of a potential function is defined by rotating the second unit vector field over 90° about the respective surface normal (304). The third unit vector field is scaled to create a non-unit vector field, and a first potential function is determined by performing a least-squares fit such that the direction and magnitude of the gradient best approximate the direction and the magnitude of the non-unit vector field. A normalization of the potential function uniformly distributes contour lines (310) of the potential function across the triangulated surface. The contour lines are used as fiber paths (314) for laying up courses (206) of composite material to fabricate the composite ply (202).