Latest revision as of 17:35, 17 February 2021

Abstract

Research on ultrasonic welding of composites has focused mostly on studying parameters that are inputs for the process or material-related parameters, but almost no attention has been given on the effect of manufacturing tolerances. In this work, we investigated how an angle between adherends impacts the welding process and the weld quality. By increasing the angle between top and bottom adherends, it was found that the duration of the process increased while the power consumed, the weld uniformity and the weld strength decreased. However, by increasing the clamping distance, which increased the compliance of the adherends and hence their ability to deform under the applied welding force, the effect of the misalignment on both the welding process and weld quality could be substantially reduced.

Full document

References

[1] Villegas, I.F. In situ monitoring of ultrasonic welding of thermoplastic composites through power and displacement data. J. Thermoplast. Compos. Mater. (2015) 28(1):66-85.

[2] Villegas, I.F. Strength development versus process data in ultrasonic welding of thermoplastic composites with flat energy directors and its application to the definition of optimum processing parameters. Compos. Part A. (2014)65:27-37.

[3] Palardy, G. et al. A study on amplitude transmission in ultrasonic welding of thermoplastic composites. Compos. Part A. (2018)113:339-349.

[4] Zhao, T. et al Towards robust sequential ultrasonic spot welding of thermoplastic composites: Welding process control strategy for consistent weld quality. Compos. Part A.(2018)109:355-367.

[5] Eveno, E.C. and Gillespie, J.W. Jr. Experimental investigation of ultrasonic welding of graphite reinforced polyetheretherketone composites. Proceedings of the National SAMPE Technical Conference, Atlantic City, NJ, USA (1989).

[6] S.L. Veldman et al., "Development of a multifunctional fuselage demonstrator", Aerospace Europe Conference, Bordeaux (2020).

[7] Tutunjian, S. et al. A control method for the ultrasonic spot welding of fiber-reinforced thermoplastic laminates through the weld-power time derivative. J. Manuf. Mater. Process. (2018)3(1).

[8] Levy, A. et al. Modeling of the heating phenomena in ultrasonic welding of thermoplastic composites with flat energy directors. J. Mater. Process. Technol. (2014)214:1361-1371.