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Session: Session 5a: Advances in Manufacturing Automation
Session starts: Wednesday 15 April, 09:40
Presentation starts: 09:40
Room: Main

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Sovit Agarwal (Institute of Lightweight Systems, German Aerospace Center (DLR))
Dominik Delisle (Institute of Lightweight Systems, German Aerospace Center (DLR))
Julius Biermann (Institute of Lightweight Systems, German Aerospace Center (DLR))
Stefan Junker (Institute of Lightweight Systems, German Aerospace Center (DLR))

Abstract:
As we move closer to the 2050 climate goal of achieving net-zero carbon emissions, the aviation industry faces a challenge to rapidly develop new aircraft propulsion technologies that would align with the emission targets. Hydrogen is emerging as one of the most promising fuel alternatives which would enable aircrafts to fly with zero emissions. However, several challenges still remain before hydrogen can be used as a clean aviation fuel and one of the major ones is the development of reliable, safe and light-weight hydrogen storage technologies and its integration into the aircraft. Research interest towards developing Type V liner-less composite tanks has significantly increased, especially for commercial aviation because of its huge advantage in weight reduction when compared to tanks with metal / plastic liners. Therefore, the main objective of this research is to advance the manufacturing technology and methodology required to produce Type V CFRP tank structure using Automated Fiber Placement (AFP) technique. The research focuses on challenges faced when conventional AFP manufacturing methodologies and strategies, that are mostly used for flat or slightly curved surfaces, are applied to rotational bodies like a tank structure and attempts to provide new solutions to overcome these challenges. AFP-related parameter settings such as layup strategy, staggering of consecutive plies and starting & cutting sequences were studied as these parameters directly influence the degree of coverage, gap overlaps and layup quality respectively. CAM simulations and experimental trials were performed to compare the conventional tape placement strategies with the newly proposed strategies and it was found that the new strategies improved the overall degree of coverage, gap distribution and layup quality significantly, especially in the spherical region of the tank structure where steering of the material by the AFP head causes majority of the problems. A detailed quantitative and qualitative discussion on the major drawbacks associated with conventional tape placement strategies and the advantages of the newly proposed strategies will be presented in the full paper.