Filament Winding
What is Filament Winding?
Filament winding is a manufacturing process for composite products. Carbon fiber is the most common material used in this process. The process used for manufacturing cylindrical, round shape of products. Most generally manufactured parts are pressure vessel, composite shaft, rocket, pipe, robotic arm.
How does process work?
Filament winding process includes a mandrel for the winding. The process starts with the fibres passing through a resin bath. After passing along the resin bath, fibres start winding around a mandrel. The mandrel provides fibres to acquire the desired shape around it. A computer-controlled machine does a fibre placement at desired orientations. The machine works with at least two motion axes based on a winding algorithm on the computer depending on the part geometry.
At the end of the process, a thermal curing process starts to cure the resin. After that, the mandrel is removed or extracted from the workpiece.
What are the important parameters?
Carbon fibre and glass fibre are the most popular and convenient materials for filament winding process.
- The orientation angles of the fibres on the mandrel are important for the mechanical properties of the part.
- In addition, thermal curing time has also a big impact on properties.
- The fibre volume fraction is important for the process
What are the advantages?
In conclusion, many industries uses the filament winding process for a wide range of applications. For example, long length pipes are also manufactured from the filament winding process and it is called a continuous process.
As a result, the filament winding process provides good mechanical properties with the following advantages:
- Desired fibre orientations
- High fibre volume fractions
- Low labour cost
- High strength to weight ratio
