Automated lay-up of composite blades

"Automated Lay-Up of Composite Blades" describes the Author’s contribution to a joint research project between Dowty Aerospace Propellers and the University of Durham into the automated lay-up of complex, three dimensional carbon fibre composite propfan blade preforms. The emphasis of the highly applied Project, now continuing at Brunei University, has been to develop an operational research demonstrator cell. The existing manual lay-up techniques employed by Dowty have been reviewed and a new met ho logy devised which can be far more easily automated. To implement the new met ho logy, a specialized lay-up station has been developed along with a practical prototype vacuum gripper technology capable of manipulating the range of large, complex, flexible and easily distorted plies required for propfan preform manufacture. Both the gripper technology and the Lay-Up Station have been successfully tested, the latter in an industrial environment to manufacture "real life” propfan blades.