ContentsIntroduction

Industrial Stakeholder Group

Scientific & Techinical Objectives

Stellar Project BrochureIssue 1 January 2015

www.stellar-project.eu

Selective tape-laying for cost effective manufacturing of optimised multi-material components

2 Stellar Project

Stellar Project: Selective Tape-Laying for Cost-Effective Manufacturing of Optimised Multi-Material Components

The aim of the Stellar project is to develop the manufacturing process for high-speed placement of carbon, glass and polymer fibre reinforced matrices, in selected locations in a composite structure, to provide the optimum reinforcement, weight and cost profile within a part.

The concept of this project is to develop the design methodologies, manufacturing processes, equipment and control systems needed for localised placement of different fibre-reinforced thermoplastic composite tapes onto different substrates, creating locally reinforced components that are fully weight-optimised.

To achieve this, the project will focus on development of the Automated Tape Laying (ATL) process to selectively place reinforced thermoplastic tapes in 3 manufacturing routes:

• Selective reinforcement of existing components

• Direct additive manufacture of components

• Manufacture of selectively reinforced tailored blanks for compression moulding

The manufacturing process developed will have a significant effect on the weight of structures, as for the first time it will allow different reinforcement fibres (polymer, glass, carbon) to be used synergistically in the same thermoplastic polymer matrix, to produce hybrid multi-material structural components with optimised performance and weight.

Introduction

3Project Brochure - January 2015

You are invited to become a member of the Stellar project Industrial Stakeholder Group

Stellar is a collaborative three year project part-funded by the European Commission. It has nine partner organisations from six European countries and

will develop manufacturing processes for high-speed placement of carbon, glass and polymer fibre reinforced matrices.

The Industrial Stakeholder Group will provide a forum for two-way discussion. Stakeholder Group members will receive advance information about the new technologies and the ability to steer the project outcomes, while consortium partners will receive external feedback and commercial perspectives on their developments.

Join and Influence OutcomesThe Stakeholder Group will have the opportunity to meet with the consortium partners at several workshops throughout the duration of the project as well as participating in active discussions on the project’s professional LinkedIn group.

Stakeholder Group Members will:

• Receive the latest updates on project progress, including development of new materials and technologies.

• Have the opportunity to steer the project outcomes to be industry-relevant.

• Provide feedback and commercial perspectives on the project.

To become a Stakeholder Group Member, please visit www.stellar-project.eu/isg

Industrial Stakeholder Group

4 Stellar Project

Scientific and Technical Objectives

The overall goal of Stellar is to develop the tape-laying process to cost-effectively place different reinforcements locally within a single component, minimising component weight and maximising performance.

Ensuring the industrial applicability of the selective tape-laying process

The partners will identify and specify two case study applications, one in each of 2 application areas, with a target decrease in materials usage of at least 20%. The project will consider different production rate scenarios to each of the target application areas, which may be to make a carbon intensive cost-optimized load-optimized, tailored blank for a high-performance application in 10-30 minutes, or to stamp-form a tailored blank in under 3 minutes for mass production.

Objective: ensure that the project outputs will be industrially relevant and exploitable.

Novel precursor materials for the selective tape-laying process

Some of the material combinations proposed in Stellar do not yet exist commercially, so we will develop novel thermoplastic tapes reinforced with polymer, glass and carbon fibres, using a meltimpregnation process, at speeds greater than 60m/min to ensure cost-effectiveness. The project will also produce intermediate organic sheets from at least 2 materials combinations using a film stacking process, for subsequent tape-laying and compression moulding processes, as well as at least 2 flowing compounds for compression moulding.

Objective: provide new high quality fibre reinforced thermoplastic tapes, compounds and intermediate sheets for subsequent tape-laying and compression moulding processes.

Maximising the speed of the tape-laying process for combinations of different reinforcements

The Stellar project will develop the laser assisted tape-laying process so that it has the temperature control needed to directly manufacture entire components in a single-step tape-laying process. Secondly, we will use the tape-laying process to manufacture complex preforms for subsequent stamp forming and compression moulding, with production speeds >600 mm/s. Finally, we will lay reinforcement tapes directly onto moulded or formed parts, either to produce the final component directly, or for subsequent stamp forming, with a >30% reduction in process material wastage.

Objective: generate the technical ability to selectively place different tapes in different areas of a component, for example in locating the tapes accurately, in achieving full consolidation over the full tape length and in differentially heating the various materials.

5Project Brochure - January 2015

Scientific and Technical Objectives

Downstream post-forming processes to increase component complexity and production rate

For production scenarios where direct manufacturing from the tape-laying process cannot achieve the production rate or complexity demanded by an end-use application, the project will develop post-forming techniques. We will develop the moulding parameters for tailored blanks and sheets for use in stamp forming and compression over-moulding, using components representative of key structural

features, with a target cycle time of < 3 minutes.

The partnership will also enhance the ability to model these complex moulding processes beyond the capability of current simulation, so that we understand the moulding limitations prior to the later manufacture of demonstrator components.

Objective: significantly enhance existing stampforming and compression moulding processes by, for the first time, enabling the selective reinforcement of the parts that each process can produce.

Synchronous robotic placement of material in complex multi-material structures

We will develop a machine cell that has multiple placement heads to allow the synchronous placement of material

in complex multi-material composite structures, enabling a step change in deposition rates, efficiencies and costs. We will work on the optimum control system methodology to allow active cooperation of between 2 and 4 robots on the same component, and we will implement the machine control systems and hardware needed to achieve this. We will also use machine simulation to model the improvements obtained by using synchronous robots, and to avoid crashes, and to verify the predicted process speed benefits (1.3-1.7 times faster than a single robot) that can be achieved.

Objective: enable an increase in the speed of the tape-laying process using by using multiple robots working in harmony (for example, incorporating control strategies to determine which robot has to pause and which robot may continue).

Demonstration and validation of the selective tape-laying process

The partners will assess the robustness of the developed processes through pilot processing, to determine outline process parameters. We will redesign 2 existing components for selective tapelaying, and then demonstrating the use of the process to manufacture those components. We will compare the performance of the existing parts to the parts produced from the processes developed during the project, particularly to assess the target benefits of reduced material usage and optimised part performance for weight, and we will also assess the robustness of the process.

Objective: demonstrate and validate the developed process by defining, fabricating and testing two demonstrator components.

Copyright © NetComposites 2015

Selective tape-laying for cost effective manufacturing of optimised

multi-material components

www.stellar-project.eu

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 609121.

ContactFor further information on Stellar, or to join the Industrial Stakeholder Group, please contact:

Dr. Gary Foster

NetComposites Ltd T: +44 (0)1246 266244 E: gary.foster@netcomposites.com

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