Automatic production and precise positioning of carbon fiber reinforced plastics (FRP) require precise detection of the fiber orientations. This paper presents an automatic method for detecting fiber orientations of sewed carbon fibers in the production of FRP. Detection was achieved by appropriate use of regional filling, edge detection operators, autocorrelation methods, and the Hough transformation. Regional filling was used to reduce the influence of the sewed regions, autocorrelation was used to clarify the fiber directions, edge detection operators were used to extract the edge features for the fiber orientations, and the Hough transformation was used to calculate the angles. Results for two kinds of carbon fiber materials show that the method is relatively quick and precise for detecting carbon fiber orientations.

With hard turning, which is an attractive alternative to existing grinding processes, surface quality is of great importance. Signal processing techniques were used to relate workpiece surface topography to the dynamic behavior of the machine tool. Spatial domain frequency analyses based on fast Fourier transform were used to analyze the tool behavior. Wavelet reconstruction was used for profile filtering. The results show that machine vibration remarkably affects the surface topography at small feed rates, but has negligible effect at high feed rates. The analyses also show how to control the surface quality during hard turning.

Future steam turbines will use hollow structures so that the turbine inlet temperature can be increased to improve the thermal efficiency. These hollow structures are made of the nickel-base alloy Nicrofer 6025 HT and consist of a wire mesh between two cover sheets. The cover sheets can be joined to the wire mesh by capacitor discharge welding due to its extremely short welding duration. The goal of this research is to investigate suitable welding parameters so that the weld spots form in an optimum way to increase the tensile shear strength and reduce spattering. Tensile shear tests, three-point bending tests, and micrographs were used to judge the joint quality of structures made with various welding parameters. The results show that the best welds are obtained with a transmission ratio of 1:200, welding energy of 70% to 95%, and electrode force of 7 to 9 MPa.

The classical design of experiments (DoE) method can optimize systems with one technical response and multiple inputs. The objective of this study is to optimize multiple technical responses at the same time by integrating fuzzy logic transformation into a DoE system. The transformation from technical responses to the individual fuzzy responses and the overall fuzzy response are first defined, and the fuzzy response system is established. The method used to optimize the overall fuzzy response is introduced and discussed. The results show that the established fuzzy response system can optimize systems with multiple technical responses and multiple inputs.

For precision machining, the hard turning process is becoming an important alternative to some of the existing grinding processes. This paper presents an analytical model for predicting cutting forces in hard turning of 51CrV4 with hardness of 68 HRC. The cutting tool used is made from cubic boron nitride (CBN) with a wiper cutting edge. Formulas for differential chip loads are derived for three different situations, depending on the radial depth of cut. The cutting forces are determined by integrating the differential cutting forces over the tool-workpiece engagement domain. For validation, cutting forces predicted by the model were compared with experimental measurements, and most of the results agree quite well.