Angled Fiber Base Material Manufacturing Without Support
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Current methods for manufacturing fiber reinforced composite materials with angled reinforcing fibers incorporate a support member, resulting in layers with the support member included, rather than pure reinforcing fiber layers.
Innovation Solution
A method to produce a continuous elongated sheet of reinforcing fiber base material with angled fibers by placing and welding sheet-shaped reinforcing fiber pieces without a support member, ensuring the fibers are oriented at an angle relative to the longitudinal direction.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of manufacture
If a support member is used in the manufacturing method, then the reinforcing fiber material can be laid up at angles, but the support member becomes included in the final composite material layers
Solution Approach 1:
The invention extracts and removes the support member from the final composite structure. The support member is used temporarily during the laying up process to enable angled fiber placement, but is then completely removed, leaving only the reinforcing fibers in the desired angular orientation without any support material remaining in the final product.
Solution Approach 2:
The support member is applied preliminarily before the actual fiber laying up process. It serves as a temporary substrate that enables the fibers to be positioned at the required angles, but is designed to be removed after serving its preliminary function, ensuring it does not remain in the final composite.
2Adaptability or versatility
If the reinforcing fiber base material is pulled from a roll body in different directions for each layer, then the orientation direction of reinforcing fibers can differ between layers, but the process complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The support member is pre-configured with the desired angular orientation markings or guidance features before the fiber laying up begins. This preliminary preparation allows workers to simply follow the predetermined angles on the support member without needing to mentally calculate or manually adjust angles for each layer, thereby maintaining high adaptability while reducing process complexity.
Solution Approach 2:
The support member acts as an intermediary that translates the complex requirement of multiple angular orientations into a simple, unified platform. By providing a single support member with pre-marked or pre-configured angle guides, it mediates between the desired variable fiber orientations and the simplified laying up operation, eliminating the need for complex directional changes.
3Manufacturing precision
If sheet-shaped reinforcing fiber pieces are placed and welded without a support member, then pure fiber layers are achieved, but the manufacturing process becomes more difficult
Solution Approach 1:
The support member is extracted from the final product while retaining its function during manufacturing. It is used to facilitate the difficult placement and welding operations by providing a temporary working platform, then is completely removed, achieving both the ease of manufacture during the process and the purity of the final fiber layers.
Solution Approach 2:
The support member serves as a temporary intermediary that makes the difficult fiber placement and welding process easier to execute. It provides a stable base for positioning and aligning the fiber pieces during welding, but is designed to be removed afterward, thus mediating between the manufacturing difficulty and the final product purity.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
This approach allows for the creation of fiber reinforced composite materials with angled reinforcing fibers in each layer, enhancing material strength and rigidity without the inclusion of a support member, thus improving the manufacturing process efficiency.
Implementation Method 1
a welding mechanism that heats and welds adjoining edges of the reinforcing fiber material pieces to one another
Data Source
AI summary
A method for manufacturing a reinforcing fiber base material includes a placement step of placing a sheet-shaped reinforcing fiber material piece, in which reinforcing fibers are arranged so as to extend in one direction and bound together with a thermoplastic resin, on a table so that the orientation direction of the reinforcing fibers is at an angle with respect to a longitudinal direction of the reinforcing fiber base material, and a welding step in which, in a state in which a previously placed reinforcing fiber material piece and the reinforcing fiber material piece placed subsequent thereto are abutted against each other in the longitudinal direction, adjoining edges of the two reinforcing fiber material pieces are welded together to form a continuous sheet shape.