Thermal image-based monitoring for the automated fiber placement process

Due to increasing consumption of fiber-reinforced plastics (CFRP) especially in aerospace applications also production processes such as Automated Fiber Placement (AFP) gain in importance. However, manual visual inspection in the AFP quality assurance is time consuming and insufficient, not least through the low contrast of CFRP materials. The presented process monitoring for AFP bases on occurring temperature differences during the lay-up process. Therefore, a newly developed monitoring system containing an infrared camera integrated in the Fiber Placement head is presented. Its algorithm can localize tows as well as certain temperature anomalies. Combined with the process knowledge provided by the path planning defects can be detected online.