| Résumé | Thermoplastic composites offer many attractive characteristics such as no shelf life, high fracture toughness, high temperature resistance, recyclability etc. The short coming of thermoplastic composites is their high viscosity, even at processing temperature. Due to the high viscosity, techniques for the manufacturing of thermoplastic composite have been limited to molding processes such as compression molding, high temperature stamping, where high temperature, high pressure and long duration are used. The advent of automated fiber placement machine brings forward possibilities to manufacture of large thermoplastic composite components. This is due to the fact that heating and compaction is done on the go directly on the surface of the substrate, and the flexibility of the feeding head to conform to the shape of the mold. It is in the spirit of exploration for new manufacturing possibilities that Bell Helicopter has supported an inter industry- university project for the development of thermoplastic composite cones aimed at helicopter tail boom applications. The cone represents a segment of the helicopter tail boom. It is made using carbon/PEEK material and automated fiber placement. The work consists of the Determination of the lay-up sequence to address the loads, the Development of the manufacturing processes, the Measurement of temperature variation during the making of a ring, the Checking of the quality of the cone, Development of tube bending test set up, Development of theoretical calculations to determine the buckling load of the cone subjected to bending, Testing the cone under bending load, and Comparing the experimental buckling with calculated buckling load. |
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