Smart Defect Control: the next level of carbon NCF quality Injection lnjection moulders who have made bioplastics work Fibre placement Advanced technologies for the manufacture of aircraft components using dry fibre placement MANUFACTURING Non destructive control 19 21 23 MANUFACTURING non destructive control Smart Defect Control: the next level of carbon NCF quality Peter Vojcena, Inspection Systems Saertex GmbH Co. KG M ultiaxial reinforcements or noncrimp fabrics are a quasi-isotropic construction made of multiple unidirectional layers placed at various angles (see Figure 1). For high-end applications in sectors such as aerospace and medical engineering, it is essential to avoid any defects in the materials. It is possible to check the outside surface of a fabric, but what is going on inside a multi- Fig. 1: Non-crimp fabric (NCF) Saertex presented a breakthrough at JEC World 2018: a never reached quality level for carbon non-crimp fabrics in aerospace, medical engineering and other high-end applications through the use of Saertex® Smart Defect Control (SDC). This continuous, automated, non-destructive inline quality control system makes it possible to inspect the inner layers of a carbon non-crimp fabric (NCF). axial fabric? What about the inner layers? Are there any gaps? Or other defects such as fuzz balls or undulations? The quality control of reinforcements involves a lot of work and is not a continuous process. Material inspection is performed visually and in several steps after production at the fabric supplier's facility. Furthermore, the materials are repeatedly checked via the inspection of incoming goods by the customers. Reaching a new level of quality One of the main challenges is to combine production efficiency and continuous quality inspection to achieve "zero-defect" fabrics in high-end applications. Saertex and its partners developed a solution that is the first of its kind: Saertex® Smart Defect Control. This solution based on non-destructive automated testing makes it possible to inspect the inner carbon layers of multiaxial non-crimp fabrics continuously and to reach a new level of quality. Saertex developed this inline automated system for use in the standard production process of high-end carbon non-crimp fabrics. The existing quality control is enhanced with an intelligent signal processing method for continuous quality identification. The software's graphical interface (see Figure 2) combines a virtual real-time scan image of the fabric layer and a graph that directly shows the irregularities during production. The new inspection system is a step on the way to providing zero-defect materials. It can detect gaps in the inside layers of a noncrimp fabric down to 2mm width. The detection of even smaller gaps and various other defects, such as fuzz balls or fibre undulations, inside the inner layers already shows good results. N°120 April 2018 / jec composites magazine 19