ESR: James Solly

ESR NUMBER: ESR8

INDUSTRIAL PARTNERS: FibR, Foster + Partners,  S-Form

INSTITUTE: ITKE

Description:

Digital fabrication technologies offer the possibility to widen the range of processes available through standardised fabrication and bypass the limitations on fabrication of bespoke forms. Often accompanied by trial-and-error approaches, the limits of digital fabrication methods are quickly reached without a thorough understanding of the strength and limits of the forming processes and the materials.

Virtual prototyping replaces material/physical prototyping by simulating the fabrication processes: the machining, material interaction and forming stages to test and evaluate system performance. It is the proposal of this project to apply a virtual prototyping methodology to the FRP fabrication method “Coreless Fibre Winding”, that has been under development at the ITKE and ICD at the University of Stuttgart since 2012.

This process involves the winding of Carbon and Glass-Fibre around minimal structural frameworks utilising robotic placement methods. The resulting, programmed, fibre-fibre interaction between these frames can be used to generate complex geometries.

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