Optimization on a Vessel
Holding the bonding temperature within 1.5 °C across the cylinder and the domes of a pressure vessel, where curvature alone would swing it by 80 °C. Today the same optimisation runs in about 10 seconds in the browser.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!The problem: curvature changes the heat input
When a tape is wound over a pressure vessel, the tooling curvature changes continuously from the cylinder into the elliptical dome. The laser sees a different surface angle at every moment: the peak laser intensity rises by about 80%, and the bonding temperature shifts by about 80 °C at the cylinder–dome transition. With constant laser power, part of the vessel overheats and degrades while another part bonds poorly.
The solution: optical-thermal optimisation
Model the winding path
A winding path over the cylindrical and ellipsoidal (dome) sections, with the tooling curvature varying along it.
Trace the laser and solve the heat
The numerical optical-thermal model predicts where the laser energy lands and the transient bonding temperature at every position.
Optimise the laser power
Total laser power is adjusted between 30% and 175% of the reference case to cancel the local curvature effects.
Result
The process temperature stays within 1.5 °C of the desired value along the whole path, improving consolidation and the mechanical performance of the vessel.
Unsteady optical-thermal events on a curved surface: the pressure vessel case.
Today: the same optimisation in seconds, in the browser
What once took minutes on a workstation now runs in the public AFP Web Digital Twin demo, up to about 8× faster after the latest GPU optimisation. That matters in AFP because heat from each new layer flows into the layers below: the faster a full lay-up can be simulated, the sooner defects from accumulated heat can be found and designed out.
Benchmark hardware: a laptop GPU with 80 W TGP and 16 GB GDDR6, as announced on OTOMcomposite on LinkedIn.
AFP Web digital twin: optimisation in a few seconds. Watch on YouTube
Winding a vessel, pipe or tank?
Try the optimisation yourself in the public demo, or let us run it on your geometry.