By changing the placement angle of the placement path, the fiber direction can be controlled and adjusted to change the load distribution in the laminate, and the stress and natural frequency performances of the laminate can then be altered to finally obtain laminates with desired mechanical properties. In this paper, the finite element analysis model of variable-stiffness laminates is established based on the fiber placement reference path defined by the Bezier curve method. Based on the analysis of the mechanical properties of the thermoplastic fiber variable-angle laminates obtained by variable-angle trajectory planning, the changes in the stress and deformation of the thermoplastic fiber variable-angle laminate with the connection point parameter β under a compressive load are analyzed. The influence of the parameter β on the static performances of the variable-angle laminates is studied. The simulation results indicate that the maximum stress of the laminate increases first and then decreases as the parameter β increases and reaches the maximum value when the parameter β is 0.5. The minimum stress also shows the same trend as that of the maximum stress and reaches the minimum value when the connection point parameter β is 0.3. The deformation of the variable-angle laminates varies with the change of the connection point parameter β. The maximum deformation increases at first and then decreases for the laminate with the parameter β increasing and reaches the maximum value when the parameter β is 0.8. The minimum deformation of the laminate decreases initially and then increases as the connection point parameter β increases and reaches the minimum value when the parameter β is 0.6. The deformation gradually decreases from the upper and lower ends to the middle, and the deformation area has a symmetrical form. The initial regular rectangular area gradually changes to an elliptical distribution and the area of maximum deformation gradually decreases.
Keywords: automatic placement; mechanical properties; thermoplastic fiber; variable-angle trajectory planning.