Out of Autoclave

Fabrics/Preforms

Fiber patch preforms help tailor kiteboard performance

Automated means for laying fiber only where needed offers new potential to fine-tune torsional stiffness and flexibility to board and rider styles.

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Infrastructure

NASA/Boeing composite launch vehicle fuel tank scores firsts

Subscale 5.5m-diameter cryogenic tank demonstrator with innovative fluted-core skirt is formed via robotic AFP and cured out of the autoclave.

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Pultrusion

Polyurethanes: Collaboration and adaptation for optimal application

Guest columnist Kevin Meyer, associate scientist, Dow Polyurethanes, The Dow Chemical Co. (Midland, MI, US), asks, and suggests some answers to, the question, "Why have polyurethanes, given their performance advantages, not been adopted in place of other thermosetting resins in a host of applications?"

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Glass Fibers

Disruptive composite infrastructure

FiberCore Europe claims the "Holy Grail" of delamination-resistant FRP bridge and infrastructure components with its patented InfraCore technology.

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Out of Autoclave

CW opens up on out of autoclave, in February

You may not know that CW has prepared a Supplement to the upcoming February 2016 issue that examines out of autoclave processing in detail. It asks the question: Can OOA options be matured sufficiently to yield parts with <1% void content, outside of the autoclave?

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Wind/Energy

IACMI starting to walk the talk

The Institute for Advanced Composites Manufacturing Innovation (IACMI) is six months into its five-year life and is showing signs of collaborative-based innovation.

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FRP Rebar

How have composite bridges measured up?

The latest US highway bill includes a provision to assess performance of composite bridges built years ago, bridges that CW wrote about.

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Automotive

Wet compression molding

Automated process cuts cycle time and cost for CFRP parts with potential for 65% fiber volume via Dynamic Fluid Compression Molding variant.

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Turnkey manufacturing systems: Simplifying automated HP-RTM

Having offered turnkey systems for composites since the 1990s for sheet molding compound (SMC), long fiber thermoplastic (LFT) and glass mat thermoplastic (GMT), Dieffenbacher (Eppingen, Germany) now has automated systems for high-pressure resin transfer molding (HP-RTM).

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Epoxies

Turnkey manufacturing systems: Automated RTM for aerospace

German Aerospace Center’s (DLR) Center for Lightweight Production Technology site in Stade, Germany, has developed EVo, an automated production line capable of 100,000 complex composite parts/yr.

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ELFOAM rigid foam products
Kent Pultrusion
Toray Advanced Composites hi-temperature materials
U.S. Polychemical Acrastrip
Wabash
HEATCON Composite Systems
IRIS Ai-enabled Camera
CompositesWorld
Release agents and process chemical specialties