Temperature field for laser heating of carbon fiber reinforced polyphenyl sulphide matrix composite in an automated fiber placement process

The automated fiber placement(AFP) of continuous fiber reinforced thermoplastic composite(TPC) could realize the in-situ consolidation and offer the potential to manufacture large components, reduce cost and increase production rate. Desired quality of composite components depends intensively on the temperature field distribution, and the laser heating mechanism is very complicated because of the laser energy field is coupled with the temperature field generated by the absorption of laser, so the temperature history for laser heating of carbon fiber reinforced polyphenyl sulphide (CF/PPS) matrix composite in an automated fiber placement process was studied in the finite element simulation combined heat transfer model. Meanwhile, the temperature field measurement system was built to collect and memory the temperature history for layers. The study results show that a shadow zone is present prior to the bond zone and causes a rapid drop in temperature. The peak temperature of the bond zone gradually decreases belong with the increasing of placing speed and the faster the placement speed is, the smaller the peak temperature difference is and the bigger the difference between thermocouple and simulation is. With the increase of the laser output power, the peak temperature of the layers increases gradually. To improve the efficiency of the in-situ consolidation, the maximum speed is 0.75 m/s when the laser output power is 6kW. Because of the trend is similar by comparing peak temperature of the experimental results and the simulated results, the finite element simulation results are correct.