Reference - ‘But How Can We Make Something Useful Out of Black String?’ The Development of Carbon Fibre Composites Manufacturing (1965–2015)
| Type | Book section |
|---|---|
| Title | ‘But How Can We Make Something Useful Out of Black String?’ The Development of Carbon Fibre Composites Manufacturing (1965–2015) |
| Abstract | This chapter looks at how the manufacturing community responded to the invention of carbon fibres, the first practical, high-modulus, reinforcement to be available as continuous fibres, largely through the lens of the author’s personal experience. Whilst it seems axiomatic to us today that we use continuous fibres, most of the composites applications in 1965 used short fibres, for example, chopped glass, asbestos, whiskers or linen fibres. To a large extent, the narrative of carbon fibre composites manufacturing is the story of how to manipulate continuous fibres into complex geometries and how to do that cost-effectively without introducing strength reducing defects. Until very recently, when the manufacturing and structural integrity communities have started to interact much more, there has tended to be an almost complete disconnect between the materials, design and manufacturing worlds. This has been the case as much in industry as it has in the academia and seems to have been the norm since the very beginnings of the application of carbon fibre composites. The difficulties inherent in manufacturing geometrically complex parts were identified very early in the history of carbon fibre composites. However, it has proven to be very challenging to go beyond identifying problem issues to actually solving them, and that process is by no means complete. There are signs that the composites community may finally be on the right track, with some recent successes pointing towards research directions where design and manufacturing approaches can be unified to deliver reliable and cost-effective parts—only 50 years after the process started. |
| Authors |
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| Chapter | 2 |
| City | Cham |
| Date | 2017 |
| Editors |
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| Pages | 29-57 |
| Publisher | Springer International Publishing |
| Book | The Structural Integrity of Carbon Fiber Composites |
| Websites | |
| DOI | 10.1007/978-3-319-46120-5_2 |
| ISBN | 978-3-319-46120-5 |
| Language | English |
| Country | Switzerland |
| Comments | A link to the freely available full-text PDF document (open access) can be found at https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/en/publications/but-how-can-we-make-something-useful-out-of-black-string-the-deve |
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Welcome
Welcome to the CKN Knowledge in Practice Centre (KPC). The KPC is a resource for learning and applying scientific knowledge to the practice of composites manufacturing. As you navigate around the KPC, refer back to the information on this right-hand pane as a resource for understanding the intricacies of composites processing and why the KPC is laid out in the way that it is. The following video explains the KPC approach:
Understanding Composites Processing
The Knowledge in Practice Centre (KPC) is centered around a structured method of thinking about composite material manufacturing. From the top down, the heirarchy consists of:
- The factory
- Factory cells and/or the factory layout
- Process steps (embodied in the factory process flow) consisting of:
The way that the material, shape, tooling & consumables and equipment (abbreviated as MSTE) interact with each other during a process step is critical to the outcome of the manufacturing step, and ultimately critical to the quality of the finished part. The interactions between MSTE during a process step can be numerous and complex, but the Knowledge in Practice Centre aims to make you aware of these interactions, understand how one parameter affects another, and understand how to analyze the problem using a systems based approach. Using this approach, the factory can then be developed with a complete understanding and control of all interactions.
Interrelationship of Function, Shape, Material & Process
Design for manufacturing is critical to ensuring the producibility of a part. Trouble arises when it is considered too late or not at all in the design process. Conversely, process design (controlling the interactions between shape, material, tooling & consumables and equipment to achieve a desired outcome) must always consider the shape and material of the part. Ashby has developed and popularized the approach linking design (function) to the choice of material and shape, which influence the process selected and vice versa, as shown below:
Within the Knowledge in Practice Centre the same methodology is applied but the process is more fully defined by also explicitly calling out the equipment and tooling & consumables. Note that in common usage, a process which consists of many steps can be arbitrarily defined by just one step, e.g. "spray-up". Though convenient, this can be misleading.
Workflows
The KPC's Practice and Case Study volumes consist of three types of workflows:
- Development - Analyzing the interactions between MSTE in the process steps to make decisions on processing parameters and understanding how the process steps and factory cells fit within the factory.
- Troubleshooting - Guiding you to possible causes of processing issues affecting either cost, rate or quality and directing you to the most appropriate development workflow to improve the process
- Optimization - An expansion on the development workflows where a larger number of options are considered to achieve the best mixture of cost, rate & quality for your application.
