Actual Safety Distance and Winding Tension to Manufacture Full Section Parts by Robotized Filament Winding

Abstract

Robotized filament winding technology allows one to manufacture workpieces of high performances as a result of a robot placing fibers impregnated by resin (known as roving) along the directions of stresses the workpiece is subjected to in exercise; thus, robotized filament winding favors rigidity and strength of a workpiece along some preferential directions. A proper value of the winding tension has to be chosen and kept constant along the whole winding in order to limit the defects inside the composite workpieces. To keep the tension value on roving near to the nominal value, one must plan the value of the geometric parameters characterizing the winding trajectory. The same geometric parameters influence the value of the actual safety distance that may involve collisions among the deposition system and the components of the robotized cell. This work shows how to avoid the occurrence of collisions by planning the value of the actual safety distance through the definition of geometric parameters that characterize the winding trajectory. Moreover, the collision occurrence should be considered together with the control of the winding tension on the roving in the robotized filament winding planning stage. The present work shows how to solve both the problems previously defined (i.e., to keep the winding tension on roving near to the nominal value and to avoid collision occurrence), by the solution of a constrained optimization system.