Composites Forming

Composites Forming involves shaping flat composites material blanks into three-dimensional forms, typically using molds, grippers, and diaphragms in an automated process.

Composites Forming proposes the following advantages:

• A repeatable and automatable process
• The capability to concurrently form many plies in one step.
• High production rates (Cycles times of the order of minutes).
• Tooling similar to metal forming, allowing the use of metal forming skills.
• The process can be used for many shapes currently stamped out of metals, subject to some restrictions.
• Blanks can be made of relatively cheap precursors, such as NCFs - Non-crimp fabrics.

The challenges of Composites Forming include:

• High-performance continuous fibers cannot yield like metals, leading to severe deformation of the formed materials and wrinkling of the blanks.
• The blanks move during forming and it is difficult to predict this.
• The process has many dependencies in terms of material properties, tooling preparation, and production rates

At an early stage of design, Producibility for Forming can predict the forming of a candidate preform to address these difficulties: The earlier problems can be predicted, the earlier design changes can be made and the lower the chance of specifying an infeasible design. In general, the time taken to perform a simulation increases with the fidelity and resolution of the simulation model. Complex analyses can take days to run, which is useless for initial design purposes. Composites Forming lets you select the appropriate level of simulation at each stage of the development process.

It uses geometrical or inverse methods, depending on the material model required.

Composites Forming is a nativeapp available on the Cloud or on Premises.

For information on accessing Composites Forming, see Opening an app from the Compass topic in the Getting Started User's Guide.