pps proceeding - Abstract Preview
pps proceeding
Symposium: S13 - Special: Polymer Composites for aeronautics and aerospace
Oral Presentation
 
 

High-speed Non-planar Multinozzle Additive Manufacturing of Thermosetting Polymer Composites

Chauvette Jean-François (1), Brzeski David (1), Hia Iee Lee (1), Farahani Rouhollah D (1), Piccirelli Nicola (2), Therriault Daniel (1)*

(1) LM2, Mechanical Engineering, Polytechnique Montreal. - Quebec - Canada, (2) Safran Composites - Itteville - France

In the aeronautics industry, an abradable seal coating consists of a layer of sacrificial material that is deposited inside gas turbine engines to allow minimal clearance between the tip of rotor blades and their casing. This kind of seal coating is deposited manually or by thermal spraying methods, which do not provide full control over their final geometry. In this work, we develop a non-planar multinozzle additive manufacturing (AM) approach for an automated rapid deposition of abradable thermosetting polymer composite materials that will allow greater control of the coating geometry and adding other functionalities to the deposited abradable seal coatings for future aircraft engines. The AM platform is composed of a high-pressure multinozzle printing head mounted on a 6-axis robot that allows printing on the non-planar large surface of an aircraft engine fan case. Compared to the commonly used single nozzle printing heads, the printing time is significantly reduced by extruding from up to 26 nozzles at the same time. High-resolution micro-scaffold networks of several layers are manufactured with controlled porosity to target noise reduction applications. We optimize the curing time and viscosity of the abradable composite material along with the printing time in order to maintain the material’s post-printing shape. To begin, a simple network of i × j crossroad paths is generated in order to realize a 2-layer micro-scaffold network. Then, the path is offset in the +Z direction of the planar printing surface to obtain a i × j micro-scaffold network of several layers. To approach the non-planar AM, we compute the robot trajectory using Python with software RoboDK and the scanned fan case surface as the reference frame. Finally, we use the robot’s I/O to send the extrusion signal to the pressure controller with synchronization to the robot’s motion. A planar 5-layer micro-scaffold network of 375 mm × 225 mm × 1 mm was printed at 250 mm/s under 1 minute 30 seconds. In comparison with our old methodology of direct deposition using a 4-axis pneumatic-based dispensing robot and only one extrusion nozzle, it would take more than 80 minutes to produce this print.