In Situ Thermal Inspection of Automated Fiber Placement for manufacturing induced defects

摘要

Automated Fiber Placement (AFP) manufacturing is prone to several varieties of manufacturing defects that can be detrimental to the structural integrity of the part. Detecting these defects after layup is time and labor intensive, and detection of some defect types post-cure can be difficult to infeasible due to the size of the flaws. The In Situ Thermal Inspection System (ISTIS) answers the need for fast and reliable real time inspection to enable high rate AFP manufacturing with minimal modifications or interference to the manufacturing process. This paper presents the details of the design of ISTIS and the thermal data analysis. This work presents a novel calibration and performance assessment regime which demonstrates ISTIS detecting all tested artificial manufacturing induced defects and sizing most to within 0.762 mm.