Complex Stamp Forming of Advanced Thermoplastic Composites

The inherent advantages of thermoplastics over the traditional thermoset composite systems are well recognized in the aeronautics community. The main advantages are the much faster processing and the higher toughness. The current advanced thermoplastic material systems provide excellent mechanical performance but their main disadvantage is the difficult processing. Ideally, future aircraft subcomponents with complex shapes can be readily formed on the basis of pre-consolidated tailored laminates based on uni-directional plies. However, to exploit the full potential of thermoplastic composites models are to be developed in order to predict the process feasibility and product performance in an early stage of development. This paper addresses a number of steps to increase the accuracy of stamp forming simulations and highlights promising results for identifying intra-ply shear and tool-ply behavior of thermoplastic composites. A comparison of the forming behavior of a doubly curved reference part with simulations will be presented. The paper concludes with remarks on necessary future research.