Laser Angle of Incidence Effects on in-Situ Consolidation of Automated Fiber Placement of Polyaryletherketone Composites

NASA and Electroimpact, Inc. ® in conjunction with other U.S. industry partners are performing research as a part of the NASA High-rate Composites for Aircraft Manufacturing (HiCAM) Project to fabricate thermoplastic panels using automated fiber placement (AFP) to increase manufacturing rates of aircraft structural composites. This work focuses on evaluating the in-situ consolidation AFP of thermoplastics (ICAT) process. Previous studies of the ICAT process using semi-crystalline, polyaryletherketone (PAEK) slit-tape have resulted in an adequate degree of intimate contact between plies; however, the resulting interlaminar strength have been less than laminates fabricated in an autoclave. To improve these properties, the effect of reducing the laser angle of incidence (AoI) during placement to increase the degree of auto-hesion was evaluated. The AoI of the laser assisted AFP head was varied between 12° and 16° to fabricate multiple quasi-isotropic and unidirectional test panels. Physics-based thermal models developed at the NASA Langley Research Center were utilized to predict the temperature profile. Laminate processing temperature was measured experimentally, and panel quality was evaluated by both non-destructive evaluation (NDE) as well as destructively by photo-microscopy. The effect on interlaminar strength was determined by short beam strength testing. Test results of carbon fiber laminates fabricated by ICAT using polyetheretherketone (PEEK), polyetherketoneketone (PEKK), and low-melt polyaryletherketone (LM-PAEK) at various laser angles of incidence, placement temperatures and placement speeds are presented.