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Sci Tech
Robotic system to make composite material
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The robotic manufacturing system has been used to reduce the production time of aircraft brake parts by one-third.
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A ROBOTIC system to reduce the production cost of a lightweight, heat-resistant composite material, offering promise for future widespread applications has been developed by Purdue researchers.
The `carbon-carbon composites' are currently too costly to have many commercial uses in the everyday world. Because the material is able to withstand high temperatures without losing its strength, it is used primarily in disc brakes for commercial airliners, military jets and race cars.
"It is not presently possible to get this material into more consumer-related products like cars and trucks," said Thomas Siegmund, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University.
But a research team lead by Purdue, Honeywell Aircraft Landing Systems in South Bend, Ind., and the National Composite Centre in Kettering, Ohio, has demonstrated a new manufacturing approach to produce the material at lower cost.
If the researchers are successful, the composite material might become affordable enough for a wide range of new applications, including engine parts such as pistons, biomedical devices and electronic components, such as new types of electrical transformers, and circuit boards capable of withstanding high temperatures, adds the Purdue University press release.
"We have shown that it is possible to use robotic manufacturing technology to develop a process that leads to a new way of producing these types of materials," Siegmund said. "It's a very different manufacturing technology."
The system was detailed in a research paper during the 30th North American Manufacturing Research Conference at Purdue.
The research team has used the robotic-manufacturing system to reduce the production time of making aircraft brake parts by one-third. Shaving a third from the production time means the parts could be manufactured at less expense.
"We're not there yet, but we're getting there," said Siegmund, who is managing a two-year project to develop the manufacturing system, in which a precision industrial robot deposits carbon fibres under computer control.
The project reflects a profoundly different manufacturing approach that promises to bring superior materials to the marketplace: Instead of conventional methods, researchers are now developing techniques to design the material at microscopic level as the part is being made.
The system is able to rapidly change the size and orientation of carbon fibres from one section of a brake disc to another, resulting in a better part. The engineers have used the robotic system to manufacture a brake material that contains short carbon fibres on the surface and longer fibres below the surface.
Because the transition from one orientation to the next ideally is not abrupt — but gradual — such materials are called `graded materials,' said Siegmund, who specializes in using computer simulations to analyse the properties of materials so they can be improved.
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