IN-PROCESS AUTOMATED FIBER PLACEMENT INSPECTION: APPLIED FEATURE DETECTION ON A COMPLEX PART GEOMETRY

The automated fiber placement process inherently builds a number of features into parts that are not necessarily accounted for in the design. Traditionally, these must be located, evaluated, and repaired manually. This paper presents an In-Process Inspection system capable of detecting a number of these features for further classification as defects or not. For the head mounted sensor used in this work, various data post-process steps are used to improve the accuracy of the 3D point cloud representation of the as-built surface. They will be presented in this paper along with a demonstration of defect visibility for a thick ply build up on a part with complex compound curvature.