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In situ repairing of continuous fiber-reinforced thermoplastic composite via multi-axial additive manufacturing

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Abstract

The conventional repairing of CFRP (continuous fiber-reinforced polymer composites) includes complicated steps of patching, splicing, repairing, and post-curing. Intensive labor work needs to be conducted, and poor surface quality and weak interfacial adhesion are usually observed. This work mainly introduces an in situ online repairing method using AM (additive manufacturing) facilitated composite fabrication. With the advances of the robotic-assisted AM process, the surface roughness and accuracy during the repairing process can be evaluated online upon layer-by-layer process. In order to fulfill the efficient and on-site requirements for repairing damage in structural components, this study explores the method including in situ repairing, laser point clouds online collection, and repairing path planning based on multi-axial additive manufacturing of composites. A repair algorithm is proposed incorporating point clouds collection, measurement evaluation, and path planning. Furthermore, relevant mechanical measurements have been conducted, so as to assess the interface degree of recovery. A rapid online evaluation and surface conformal repairing method have been proposed to overcome the technical bottleneck of in situ automatic repairing of damaged composites. It expands the application of multi-axial robot-assisted CFRP AM.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the financial support from the National Key R&D Program of China (2022YFB4602001, 2022YFB3402200), the Key Laboratory Fund for equipment pre-research, Practice and Innovation Funds for Graduate Students of Northwestern Polytechnical University, NSFC (52375380), and the Key Program of NSFC (92271205).

Funding

This work is supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (2022YFB4602001, 2022YFB3402200), the Key Laboratory Fund for equipment pre-research, Practice and Innovation Funds for Graduate Students of Northwestern Polytechnical University, NSFC (52375380), and the Key Program of NSFC (92271205).

Author information

Author notes

  1. Jie Hou and Lu Lu contributed equally to this manuscript.

  2. Shangqin Yuan and Heye Xiao are both corresponding authors of this article.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Unmanned System Research Institute, Northwestern Polytechnical University, 710072, Xi’an, Shaanxi, People’s Republic of China

    Jie Hou, Lu Lu, Shangqin Yuan, Ruikang Zhai, Fang Li & Heye Xiao

  2. State IJR Center of Aerospace Design and Additive Manufacturing, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, Shaanxi, 710072, People’s Republic of China

    Jie Hou, Lu Lu, Shangqin Yuan, Ruikang Zhai, Yifan Hu, Dongrui Wang & Fang Li

  3. MIIT Lab of Metal Additive Manufacturing and Innovative Design, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Shaanxi, 710d072, Xi’an, People’s Republic of China

    Jie Hou, Lu Lu, Shangqin Yuan, Ruikang Zhai, Yifan Hu, Dongrui Wang & Fang Li

  4. National Key Lab of Aerospace Power System and Plasma Technology, Air Force Engineering University, Xi’an, 710038, People’s Republic of China

    Xiangfan Nie

  5. National Key Lab of Aerospace Power System and Plasma Technology, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, 710049, People’s Republic of China

    Xiangfan Nie

Authors
  1. Jie Hou
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  2. Lu Lu
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  8. Fang Li
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  9. Heye Xiao
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Contributions

Jie Hou: concept, coding, writing, experiment.

Lu Lu: concept, coding, writing, experiment.

Shangqin Yuan: experiment, review, editing.

Ruikang Zhai: editing, review.

Yifan Hu: review.

Dongrui Wang: review.

Xiangfan Nie: review.

Fang Li: review.

Heye Xiao: review, funding.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Shangqin Yuan or Heye Xiao.

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Appendix

Appendix

Nomenclature

Abbreviation

Definition

CFRP

Continuous fiber-reinforced polymer

AM

Additive manufacturing

DED

Directed energy deposition

NDT

Non-destructive testing

NURBS

Non-uniform rational B-splines

TCP

Tool center point

DT algorithm

Delaunay triangulation algorithm

PCA

Principal component analysis

RMSE

Root mean square error

figure a

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Hou, J., Lu, L., Yuan, S. et al. In situ repairing of continuous fiber-reinforced thermoplastic composite via multi-axial additive manufacturing. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 132, 853–872 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-024-13381-6

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