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In-situ consolidation, where very low porosity content is sought, has been focusing attention of the aircraft industry for the past few years. This paper presents the latest advances made by Coriolis on such topic. A state of the art laser assisted automated fiber placement (AFP) head developed by Coriolis was used to produce in-situ and autoclave consolidated samples. Porosity content, degree of crystallinity and interlaminar shear strength were measured for each consolidation type. Manufacturing settings leading to very limited porosity content and acceptable degree of crystallinity are presented and improvement paths are proposed to highlight key features needed for the next generation of AFP machines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When using thermoplastic composite automated fiber placement, two opposing layup qualities are sought: a very fast tacking of the plies allowing a high throughput of materials and at the opposite end of the spectrum, the so called "in-situ consolidation" where the part will not require any postlayup consolidation. In order to evaluate the effects of machine parameters, a set of thermoplastic laminates was manufactured using a state of the art laser assisted AFP machine developed by Coriolis. The process parameters (namely compaction force, speed, size of laser beam, head tilt angle) were changed. The quality of the resulting panels was characterized by density measurements and cross section microscopy. The results show that the processing parameters have a strong effect on the quantity and location of the porosities. The key features of the future AFP machines are discussed with these results in mind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]