Design and analysis of a metamorphic mechanism for automated fibre placement

Automated fibre placement (AFP) integrates the functions of fibre feeding, transmission, clamping, restarting, cutting, heating, and compacting, which is characterised by multiple degrees-of-freedom, multiple drives, constraints, and strong coupling. To simplify the complexity of mechanical structures, a metamorphic design to achieve above functions is introduced in this study based on the relationship of the motion sequence and constraints in the effort to realise sequential motions. Furthermore, the variable topological structures and the mobility of this mechanism are analysed in different phases of the operation, and a kinematics model is proposed to reveal the dynamic performance. Specifically, a mechanical model is presented for convenient analysis of the transformation of phases. The global optimisation process is then introduced using global and other configuration optimisers that ultimately obtain global optimisation results. Corresponding simulation results demonstrate that the proposed mechanism can effectively realise stable operation.