Executive Summary : | In the different engineering applications, shape-changing capabilities offer a significant improvement in performance, as compared with fixed geometry and can efficiently meet different operational requirements. In the recent past, multistable structures have shown great potential as a component in adaptive structures, especially due to the existence of multiple stable shapes and the ability to remain in these stable states without any external forces.Multistable structures can be generated either by utilizing the differential thermal coefficient of an unsymmetric laminate in orthogonal directions [8], or as a result of tuning the geometry such as changing Gaussian curvature in initially curved shells [9], controlling slit spacing in kirigami-inspired structure or due to prestressing. However, thermally induced bistable shapes of unsymmetric laminates often result in a narrow range of shapes limiting its use in different applications. It is known that an ideal adaptive structure system asks for a structure with highly anisotropic internal architecture to fulfill the contradictory requirements of compliance and stiffness. With the advancement of fiber placement technology, it is possible to manufacture fibers even with curvilinear paths or so-called variable stiffness (VS) composites. This ability to locally tailor the fiber orientation provides a much wider design space and allows composite structures with desired optimal properties to be developed.Although several works have been carried out in the field of variable stiffness laminates, where numerical modelling as well the semi-analytical structures have clearly proven their added advantage of conventional structures. In addition, the tailorability possibilities that VS laminates offer can result in optimal designs. Advanced manufacturing techniques like Automated fiber placement, Tailored fiber placement can quite precisely layup fibers of a given surface in a curvilinear fashion. However, setting up these equipments can be extremely expensive particularly for prototyping in laboratory setup and in small scale projects. However, with the advancement of additive manufacturing techniques in the past years, composite manufacturing has been simpler and cheaper than composite structures with tow-steering capabilities allowing manufacturing of variable stiffness laminates. Further, there is a big research gap in modelling and simulating the additive manufacturing of composites process particularly having tow-steering capabilities. |