Abstract
Made with high-strength continuous fibers, textile composites are of increasing interest in automotive and aerospace industries due to their high-strength/weight performance as compared to sheet metals. Nevertheless, significant reduction in manufacturing cost is required to use textile composites for mass production applications. Highly efficient thermo-stamping operations possess the potential to substantially reduce fabrication time and cost compared to the much slower autoclave forming process. In this paper, thermo-forming of woven fabric-reinforced thermo-plastic composites is simulated using a non-orthogonal material model. The temperature effect is taken into account by modifying the equivalent material properties for the composite sheet based on the contact status between the tooling and the blank. The approach is exemplified on the hemispherical thermo-stamping of a plain weave composite sheet.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 413-420 |
| Number of pages | 8 |
| Journal | Composite Structures |
| Volume | 61 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Sep 2003 |
Funding
The authors would like to thank the NSF Division of Design, Manufacture, and Industrial Innovation (DMI-9900185) and Ford Motor Company for their support of this research. The helpful discussions with Profs. Julie Chen and James Sherwood at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell are greatly appreciated.
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Ceramics and Composites
- Civil and Structural Engineering
