Digital Commons Network^™

High-Rate Production Of Thermoplastic Composite Structures For Urban Air Mobility Vehicles Utilizing Fastener-Free Assembly Methods, Robert H. Shumpert

Theses and Dissertations

This study aimed to develop a manufacturing plan for a Thermoplastic fiber-reinforced propeller blade for urban air mobility applications. This propeller blade offer a few unique challenges including the complex geometries of the blade. Another important aspect of the blade is using fusion bonding methods to increase the strength of joints in the product while reducing weight from fasteners and adhesives. This manufacturing process will be validated by producing a physical demonstrator to ascertain the efficacy of the manufacturing techniques used. First, the techniques that will make up the manufacturing plan must be selected. To do this, a review of …

A Semantic Web Approach To Fault Tolerant Autonomous Manufacturing, Fadi El Kalach

Theses and Dissertations

The next phase of manufacturing is centered on making the switch from traditional automated to autonomous systems. Future Factories are required to be agile, allowing for more customized production, and resistant to disturbances. Such production lines would have the capability to reallocate resources as needed and eliminate downtime while keeping up with market demands. These systems must be capable of complex decision making based on different parameters such as machine status, sensory data, and inspection results. Current manufacturing lines lack this complex capability and instead focus on low level decision making on the machine level without utilizing the generated data …

Digital Twins In Advanced Manufacturing To Enhance Manufacturing Efficiency, Max Kirkpatrick

Theses and Dissertations

Digital Twins of manufacturing systems are an emerging tool for improvement, optimization, and monitoring of physical manufacturing systems. The idea of representing physical systems with digital depictions has been prevalent since the early days of Computer Aided Design (CAD), but recently the concept of a Digital Twin has been expanded to encapsulate more than just a digital model of a design. Instead, the Digital Twin offers a unique, comprehensive, and real-time toolset for analysis and improvement of physical systems. These tools can be used to improve system efficiency, perform “what-if” analyses, virtually commission manufacturing equipment, analyze system performance in real …

Hybrid Theory-Machine Learning Methods For The Prediction Of Afp Layup Quality, Christopher M. Sacco

Theses and Dissertations

The advanced manufacturing capabilities provided through the automated fiber placement (AFP) system has allowed for faster layup time and more consistent production across a number of different geometries. This contributes to the modern production of large composite structures and the widespread adaptation of composites in industry in general and aerospace in particular. However, the automation introduced in this process increases the difficulty of quality assurance efforts. Industry available tools for predicting layup quality are either limited in scope, or have extremely high computational overhead. With the advent of automated inspection systems, direct capture of semantic inspection data, and therefore complete …

Prediction Of Residual Stress And Distortion In Laser Powder Bed Fusion Additive Manufacturing, Bhanuprakash Sairam Kosaraju

Theses and Dissertations

Additive Manufacturing (AM) has its proven advantages to unlock the design space and manufacturing capabilities for complex geometries with lightweights. Distortion is one of the most common defects that occur in Laser Powder Bed Fusion Additive Manufacturing (LPBFAM), which is caused by the significant residual stress during the printing process. This can lead to numerous process iterations to achieve the requisite form and fit tolerances.

In this study, Finite Element (FE) model that utilizes the element birth approach was developed to predict the residual stress and distortion in the LPBFAM process. The methodology leverages a simplified approach where the detailed …

Development Of An Automated Fiber Placement Process For The Fabrication Of Thermoplastic Composite Laminates, Anthony M. Sabido

Theses and Dissertations

An automated fiber placement process is desired for manufacturing variable-stiffness thermoplastic composite laminates. By developing such a composite laminate, it is possible to take advantage of the tunable performance increases that are achievable by spatially steering individual tows. In addition, using a thermoplastic polymer as the matrix material has many advantages: a high toughness, ability to employ thermoplastic joining processes that do not require adhesives, long storage life, and lacks the need to be refrigerated. This process was experimentally developed, where the effect of various process parameters on the quality of the laminate were evaluated. An experimental AFP head was …

Manufacturing Feature Recognition With 2d Convolutional Neural Networks, Yang Shi

Theses and Dissertations

Feature recognition is a critical sub-discipline of CAD/CAM that focuses on the design and implementation of algorithms for automated identification of manufacturing features. The development of feature recognition methods has been active for more than two decades for academic research. However, in this domain, there are still many drawbacks that hinder its practical applications, such as lack of robustness, inability to learn, limited domain of features, and computational complexity. The most critical one is the difficulty of recognizing interacting features, which arises from the fact that feature interactions change the boundaries that are indispensable for characterizing a feature. This research …