Non-hoop winding effect on bonding temperature of laser assisted tape winding process

One of the advanced methods for production of thermoplastic composite methods is laser assisted tape winding (LATW). Predicting the temperature in LATW process is very important since the temperature at nip-point (bonding line through width) plays a pivotal role in a proper bonding and hence the mechanical performance. Despite the hoop-winding where the nip-point is the straight line, non-hoop winding includes a curved nip-point line. Hence, the non-hoop winding causes somewhat a different power input through laser-rays and-reflections and consequently generates unknown complex temperature profile on the curved nip-point line. Investigating the temperature at the nip-point line is the point of interest in this study. In order to understand this effect, a numerical model is proposed to capture the effect of laser-rays and their reflections on the nip-point temperature. To this end, a 3D optical model considering the objects in LATW process is considered. Then, the power distribution (absorption and reflection) from the optical analysis is used as an input (heat flux distribution) for the thermal analysis. The thermal analysis employs a fully-implicit advection-diffusion model to calculate the temperature on the surfaces. The results are examined to demonstrate the effect of winding direction on the curved nip-point line (tape width) which has not been considered in literature up to now. Furthermore, the results can be used for designing a better and more efficient setup in the LATW process.