Automated high volume production of complex composites parts: CMTS (Continuous Multi-Tow Shearing)

Automation is a highly sought-after property in composites manufacturing and especially in the aerospace industry. The demands of the industry, however, exceed the manufacturing capabilities of automated material placement machines. In particular, as the application of fibre placement technologies expanded to more complex parts, tow steering became one of the most critical capabilities. The steering process causes many different types of defects, and their minimisation has become a major issue. To eliminate such defects, a novel concept, Continuous Tow Shearing (CTS), was recently developed. In CTS, the tows are sheared continuously to steer the fibre path instead of inducing in-plane bending. One of the advantages of the CTS concept is that the material width does not affect the steering radius. In previous research, in order to fully exploit this feature, the concept of Continuous Multi Tow Shearing (CMTS) was developed, which employs unidirectional carbon fibre fabric with multiple tows and can significantly improve productivity. In this paper, the principle and technical aspects of this new automated manufacturing technology are outlined. A complete experimental simulator of the CMTS process is analysed and preliminary benchmarking results are presented and discussed.