Automated Fiber Placement: Steering & Gap/Overlap Defects

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 simulator renders a curved fuselage panel and a robotic head laying successive tow courses along a steerable path, computing 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. Adjust steering amplitude/frequency, tow width, feed rate and the process tolerance, and watch coverage, defect rate and per-segment gap/overlap markers update live as the head sweeps each course.