The vibration characteristics of composite vertical stabilizer skin structures play a critical role in damping effects designed for overcoming the air disturbances experienced by aircraft structural components during flight. The first-order fundamental frequencies and their corresponding damping characteristics of the vertical stabilizer skin structure tow-steered by automatic fiber placement technique were optimized with the parameterized trajectories and plies as design variables. Firstly, the vibration and damping numerical models were derived based on Kirchhoff laminate theory, the Rayleigh-Ritz method, and the Strain Energy Method. Then the optimization model was developed by adopting the self-adaptive Differential Evolution Multi-objective optimization algorithm and incorporating the solution method of Pareto Front. The constraints of this optimization model considered the experimentally obtained minimum turning radius of prepregs tow-steered in automatic fiber placement process obtained from experimental tests. Finally, the comparison of numerical simulation results was conducted for the optimized trajectories and the conventional straight trajectories under various boundary conditions, and the numerical results were partially validated through damping and frequency tests. The results indicate the vibration characteristics of the composite vertical stabilizer skin structure can be enhanced to a large extent by optimizing fiber trajectories, and the enhancement percentage is affected by the boundary conditions of the actual structure.

This paper tested the viscosity of prepreg in the automatic placement process, and conducted the probe and placement-90° peel tests through the test systems. The law of variation of prepreg viscosity during the laying process was studied through these tests under different conditions by taking the peel force to intuitively and quantitatively characterise the viscosity of the prepreg. The results show that this viscosity is inversely proportional to the laying rate, proportional to the laying pressure, and quadratic to the laying temperature. Then, peel tests were simulated to validate both the correctness of the peel test and that of the probe test data fitting the two-line cohesion model. On this basis, a response surface test for laying and peeling was designed. Taking viscous peel force as the response target, the laying process parameters were optimised and the significance of their influence was further studied. The error between the test value and the predicted value of the maximum viscous peel force is 3.03%.