The coreless filament winding (CFW) is a novel robot-assisted manufacturing process in which pre-impregnated fiber bundles are wound around winding points in a predefined pattern without a mold, creating truss or lattice structures. Due to its flexibility in shape design and lightweight construction potential, the process is not only suitable for architectural applications, but also for topology-optimized fiber-reinforced fasteners or satellite structures.
The final fiber architecture results from fiber-fiber and fiber-sleeve interaction during the process, as well as sleeve positioning and orientation. Due to the interaction of the fiber bundles during the process and the typically large number of intersection points in coreless wound structures, the analytical calculation of the fiber architecture and bundle cross-sections of complex structures is challenging. A precise fiber bundle cross-section is required to prevent oversizing and thus reduce material usage. In order to obtain detailed data prior to manufacturing and to virtually simulate the manufacturing process as a basis for structural and process optimization, approaches to path planning and simulation of the manufacturing process using an explicit finite element approach are being investigated in current research.
Evaluation of sleeve alignment by simulating the manufacturing process: (a) original sleeve alignment (with winding frame and partial winding path) and (b) optimized sleeve alignment. [Kannenberg, F., Zechmeister, C., Gil Pérez, M., Guo, Y., Yang, X., Forster, D., Hügle, S., Mindermann, P., Abdelaal, M., Balangé, L., Schwieger, V., Weiskopf, D., Gresser, G. T., Middendorf, P., Bischoff, M., Knippers, J., & Menges, A. (2024). Toward reciprocal feedback between computational design, engineering, and fabrication to co-design coreless filament-wound structures. Journal of Computational Design and Engineering, 11(3), Article 3. https://doi.org/10.1093/jcde/qwae048]
Process workflow for creating a robot program: Based on the input parameters, a parameterized calculation of the necessary winding paths on the sleeves and a calculation of the necessary path poses are performed. In a subsequent step, the feasibility is evaluated by the robot system used via inverse kinematics and optimized manually or algorithmically.
Further information & funding projects
Initial situation/objective
- Expansion of the adaptable and scalable manufacturing platform for coreless winding and thus extend the potential design possibilities through robot collaboration and an autonomous mobile robot (AMR)
- Deepening and simplifying feedback between production planning and design drafts through partial automation as a basis to optimizing the winding process and thus improve usability for non-experts.
- Improvement of the simulative and empirical predictability and reliability of the manufacturing process
- Expansion of manufacturing technology for the use of bio-based conventional synthetic high-performance fibers for the utilization of alternative material systems
Contact
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Sebastian Hügle
M.Sc.Research Associate