Understanding the lamination process

Composites manufacturing is potentially facing an order of magnitude increase in the number of parts to be produced in the next ten years and beyond. Despite the introduction of alternative and automated processes, manual layup remains a crucial and widely used process in the composites industry. However it remains a relatively unknown and certainly undocumented process, which has changed little in the last 30 years. In order to meet increasing demand, composite manufacturing needs to evolve into an optimised, leaner process. To begin this change it is first necessary to build a greater understanding of the existing process. A study is conducted of a variety of operators draping prepreg sheets over a number of representative tasks. Frame by frame analysis of recorded video footage has revealed a set of common techniques used by those laminators. In this paper studies of three representative tasks are demonstrated as examples to highlight the links between layup techniques and specific layup features. This work reveals a systematic approach to layup and is the first step towards building up a knowledge based system to understand lamination.