Automated Fiber Placement: Steering & Gap/Overlap Defects (2D)

Automated Fiber Placement (AFP) robots lay composite tow onto curved aircraft tooling course by course, steering each course to follow the part's geometry. This 2D simulator renders the flat-pattern layout of a steered course stack and computes the real first-order gap/overlap that appears whenever an offset course has to follow a curved reference path — the sharper the steering and the wider the tow, the larger the defect. Drag and zoom the main view, watch the curvature/defect strip chart and the live gap/overlap gauge track the laying head, and adjust steering amplitude/frequency, tow width, feed rate, tolerance and stack size to see coverage and defect rate update live.