The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Jun. 02, 2020
Filed:
Jun. 27, 2017
The Boeing Company, Chicago, IL (US);
Troy Winfree, Tukwila, WA (US);
Adriana Willempje Blom-Schieber, Seattle, WA (US);
The Boeing Company, Chicago, IL (US);
Abstract
A method of determining fibers paths for a composite ply includes generating a triangulated surface of the composite ply, and defining a first unit vector field establishing a 0-degree direction for the triangulated surface. A second unit vector field is defined by rotating, through specified fiber angles measured relative to the 0-degree direction, the first unit vector field about surface normals of the triangulated surface. A third unit vector field representing a gradient direction of a potential function is defined by rotating the second unit vector field over 90° about the respective surface normals. The third unit vector field is scaled to create a non-unit vector field, and a first potential function is determined by performing a least-squares fit such that the direction and magnitude of the gradient best approximate the direction and the magnitude of the non-unit vector field. A normalization of the potential function uniformly distributes contour lines of the potential function across the triangulated surface. The contour lines are used as fiber paths for laying up courses of composite material to fabricate the composite ply.