JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #98 - July/August 2015 - 55

incorporated, a special acquisition
technique was developed to ensure
successful modelling. The laser-light
section sensor itself plays a subordinate
role combined with the effects of data
fusion. Therefore, the AVS 3D hardware
solution uses standard sensors that
show their basic qualities in welding
applications for seam tracking.
The robot-based AVS 3D solution
already enables the company's key customers to automatically scan their parts.
The main features demanded are the
part's three-dimensional geometry and
the local fibre orientation. The results
are directly fed back into the customers' simulation and their products'
lightweight design to save carbon fibre
material wherever possible. A global
reference system such as a robot with
precise position and alignment accuracy
is needed to fit together local measurements of geometry and fibre orientations in order to digitize complete parts.

Fibre orientation
With ± 0.1° uncertainty in fibre orientation measurements, the regular AVS is
already best in class for 2D measurements in statistical process control
and automation for fibre composites

production (Figure 3). To bring a third
dimension to this sensor, new software
modules for both digitizing and handeye calibration had to be developed.
The calibration is especially demanding.
Each local measurement of geometry
and fibre orientations has to be put
together to digitize complete parts or
assemblies. Investigations according to
the GUM (Guide to the expression of
uncertainty in measurement) showed
good results. The uncertainty of the
in-plane results could be approved to ±
0.1° and the geometry measurements
showed variations of ± 0.1 mm, which
directly affects the out-of-plane effect
on the final fibre orientation measurement. So far, these first studies with
different materials are very promising
and lead to the conclusion that 3D fibre
orientations for complex textile structures are possible with an uncertainty
of ± 0.3°. A rule of thumb in metrology
(called the Metrology Golden Rule)
says that the measurement uncertainty
should not exceed a tenth, at most a
fifth, of the tolerance.

Various applications
From the start of the AVS product family, Apodius focused its development on
meeting the demands of the automotive

Fig. 4: AVS software simultaneously delivers: Live
virtualization of measurement process indicating
actual state of the measurement; Set-actual comparison of registered geometry with the respective
part's CAD data online

industry that allow fibre orientation tolerances from ± 3° to ± 5° for structural
composite parts (Figure 4).
Apart from this focus during the development stage, the AVS 3D works fine
without loss of generality for different
materials in various applications. The
knowledge derived from the measurements is crucial for cost reduction in
both product design and production.
Especially for product design, there is
no consistent lightweight design with
the available simulations that are relatively new, and their validation has been
insufficient in the past. In the production of textile fibre structures, there are
still many manual steps with no quality
traceability.
Apodius customers have already
discovered that the knowledge derived
from measurements adds further value
to their high-value parts. In addition to
reduced cycle times, reproducible component quality is achieved so that scrap
and rework rates are minimized. With
AVS, and now AVS 3D, reaching stable
processes becomes possible - the previously required over-dimensioning of
components can be reduced. Moreover,
raw material and time savings immediately improve production efficiency. n

Fig. 3: Measured topography is being covered with texture information coming from the AVS imaging subsystem while local fiber orientations are calculated, compared to nominal values and their results displayed

No98 July - August 2015 / jec

More information:
www.apodius.com

composites magazine 55

http://www.apodius.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #98 - July/August 2015