Additive Manufacturing of next-generation carbon fibre reinforced polymer composites

ABSTRACT

Carbon fibre reinforced polymer composites have seen successful applications in aerospace, automotive and renewable energy industries over the past six decades. A number of processing and manufacturing technologies have been developed to make the composites but essentially they are all an additive process to some extent. From initial hand layup of carbon fibre prepregs (Composites 1.0) to later automated fibre/tape placement (Composites 1.5), there are increasingly released freedoms to manufacturing more complex, higher performance composites. The conventional manufacturing processes aim at scaling up the meso-scale material (such as lamina and tape) to the macro-scale composite structure, and as such the design and analysis theories for the manufactured composites are still within framework of composites laminated plate theory (CLPT), i.e., Design-for-Manufacturing. Although numerous design tools and failure criteria have been developed, there is still lack of confidence in adopting them in real-world composites design – consequently extensive and expensive experimental tests are still required for the certification of the manufactured composite structures. In this talk, I will introduce our recent advancement in real additive manufacturing of composites with be-spoke material system at multiple length scales to produce highly customised composites. Supported by the high-fidelity micromechanics based data-driven prediction and design, I will share my vision of Manufacturing-by-Design for next-generation digital, multifunctional lightweight composites in the context of Composites 2.0.