A Mini-Review and Perspective on Current Best Practice and Emerging Industry 4.0 Methods for Risk Reduction in Advanced Composites Manufacturing

The manufacturing of composite structures is a highly complex task with inevitable risks, particularly associated with aleatoric and epistemic uncertainty of both the materials and processes, as well as the need for in-situ decision-making to mitigate defects during manufacturing. In the context of aerospace composites production in particular, there is a heightened impetus to address and reduce this risk. Current qualification and substantiation frameworks within the aerospace industry define tractable methods for risk reduction. In parallel, Industry 4.0 is an emerging set of technologies and tools that can enable better decision-making towards risk reduction, supported by data-driven models. It offers new paradigms for manufacturers, by virtue of enabling in-situ decisions for optimizing the process as a dynamic system. However, the static nature of current (pre-Industry 4.0) best-practice frameworks may be viewed as at odds with this emerging novel approach. In addition, many of the predictive tools leveraged in an Industry 4.0 system are black-box in nature, which presents other concerns of tractability, interpretability and ultimately risk. This article presents a perspective on the current state-of-the-art in the aerospace composites industry focusing on risk reduction in the autoclave processing, as an example system, while reviewing current trends and needs towards a Composites 4.0 future.