Porosity analysis of carbon fibre-reinforced polymer laminates manufactured using automated fibre placement

Automated fibre placement-based manufacturing technology is increasingly being used in several engineering applications. Manufacture of carbon fibre-reinforced plastic's small/large structures have been made possible due to its remarkable capabilities like productivity and accuracy. Nevertheless, making high-quality composite laminate using automated fibre placement relies on the proper selection of critical processing variables to avoid internal flaws during the fibre placement process. Consequently, a reliable non-destructive inspection technique is required for quality assurance and structural integrity of fabricated laminates. Neutron radiography/tomography offers unique imaging capabilities over a wide range of applications including fibre-reinforced polymer composites. The application of this technique towards tomographic reconstruction of automated fibre placement-made thermoplastic composites is presented in this paper. It is shown that the porosity analysis using neutron imaging technique provides reliable information. Additionally, using such technique valuable data regarding the size and the location of the voids in the laminate can be acquired and informed. This will assist the composite structural analysts and designers to select the appropriate processing parameters towards a defect free automated fibre placement part manufacture.