CompositesWorld
Issue link: https://cw.epubxp.com/i/697353
JULY 2016 10 CompositesWorld PERSPECTIVES & PROVOCATIONS » In April, I participated for the frst time in the Hannover Fair, perhaps the largest industrial technology exhibition in the world. Te week-long event flled 16 halls and featured innovations in energy, automation, robotics, sensing and other topics. I was in the USA Research and Technology Pavilion, representing the Institute for Advanced Composites Manufacturing Innovation (IACMI, Knoxville, TN, US) in the National Network for Manufac- turing Innovation booth. On display there was the full-scale Shelby Cobra electric vehicle which features a body 3D-printed using a carbon fber-reinforced thermoplastic. It attracted a lot of atten- tion because most people are unfamiliar with 3D printing items larger than a shoebox! I did get the oppor- tunity to walk around the show one day. I found only a few advanced composites applications or technolo- gies on display; most notably, the use of carbon fber components to make equipment lighter, thus able to move parts around with less inertia. However, what fascinated me most were two over- arching technological themes: Te Internet of Tings (IoT), and Industry 4.0 (Industrie 4.0 in Germany, where the term was coined in 2011). Although these themes are not composites specifc, they will have an enormous impact on the advanced composites industry — assuming we choose to leverage the power of the tools they represent. So what do we mean by IoT and Industry 4.0? We're talking industrial revolutions: Te frst was defned by water and steam power, the second by the assembly line and electricity, and the third by robots and computers. Tis is the fourth. Because the terms IoT and Industry 4.0 are relatively new, defnitions are fuid, but Wikipedia provides a cogent starting point: Industry 4.0 is a collective term that embraces a number of contemporary auto- mation, data exchange and manufacturing technologies. It draws together Cyber-Physical Systems, the Internet of Tings and the Internet of Services. Industry 4.0 facilitates the vision and execu- tion of a Smart Factory. Within the modular, structured Smart Factories of Industry 4.0, Cyber-Physical Systems monitor physical processes, create a virtual copy of the physical world and make decentralized decisions. Over the Internet of Tings, these Cyber- Physical Systems communicate and cooperate with each other and with humans in real time, and via the Internet of Services, both internal and cross-organizational services are ofered and used by participants in the value chain. Tese technologies will be able to reduce the costs of traditional metallic fabrication a little, but there is a lot of opportunity for cost reduction in the world of composites. As we all know, the high cost of advanced composites is a major barrier to market penetra- tion. For composites, smarter, faster layup and molding processes with improved quality and reliability will be able to meet required production rates in industrial and aerospace markets. Most signif- cantly, there will be a great reduction in rework and inspection and greater consistency. At Hannover, two halls were flled with sensors that can be connected in all kinds of ways, with wireless transmission clearly the path of the future. Accurate, miniature, and most important, increasingly cheaper, these sensors can measure angles, position, dimensions, temperatures, pressures, impedance, light, elec- trical resistance — almost any physical state of a material — and relay that information to a Big Data collection repository. Tis is largely the realm of the Internet of Tings — stuf that can talk to other stuf. But data are just that — data. What we need is to trans- form that data into information and then, using knowledge of the physical relationships between these inputs, make decisions based on them. In real time. Tis is where Industry 4.0 kicks in. So, for composites, this means we can verify immediately the fber orientations of every ply laid by a machine and whether or not all the expected fber tows are present. We can know the exact state of cure within a mold and if it is where we expect it to be. And we can know if the process is drifting. Te software in the system makes the appropriate adjustment(s) to the process — inserting a missing tow before the next ply is laid up, or changing the mold temperature, the injection rate, the catalyst ratio, mold pressure, vacuum level or some other parameter — without human inter- vention. Te machines are able to do this because we have devel- oped a virtual twin of the process via simulation. Trow in light weight, along with fast robots to move mate- rials and parts through the process, and automatically inspect them and get them onto the next step — assembly or shipment — then you have the factory of the future. It might seem like science fction, but it must be our path if we are to make composites the most competitive materials of the next generation. Get ready for Composites 4.0! It might seem like science fction, but it must be our path if we are to make composites competitive. Dale Brosius is the chief commercialization ofcer for the Institute for Advanced Composites Manufacturing Innovation (IACMI, Knoxville, TN, US), a US Department of Energy (DoE)- sponsored public/private partnership targeting high-volume applications of composites in energy-related industries. He is also head of his own consulting company and his career has included positions at US-based frms Dow Chemical Co. (Midland, MI), Fiberite (Tempe, AZ) and successor Cytec Industries Inc. (Woodland Park, NJ), and Bankstown Airport, NSW, Australia-based Quickstep Holdings. He also served as chair of the Society of Plastics Engineers Composites and Thermoset Divisions. Brosius has a BS in chemical engineering from Texas A&M; University and an MBA.