Just browsing today and came across this which is pretty interesting:
[LEFT]www.composittransport.com
Basically, its a company making composite lorry trailers; dumper trucks, etc. Very interesting and certainly very novel. Has anyone worked in heavy industries like this? Its something I would love to know more about, particularly materials used in the likes of the main body of a trailer that is getting constantly battered by big rocks! [/LEFT]
What is heavy industry? Other relatively large projects are:
-roof Yitzak Rabin centre, Tel Aviv
-Composite potato trailer
-Composite rotorblades
-Composite trailer floors
-Composite bridges, 160tons working load
-Composite gate doors
-Composite architecture (mostly cladding of buildings)
-Composite minesweepers
All have their own set of challenges.
Above just a selection of larger scale project I have been involved in.
Nice Herman, thats quite an involvement. The composite minesweepers sound rather interesting - are you talking about the actual flaling rotor attachments at the ends?
Complete hulls. Last one was 62 meters, infused in 2 shots (one shot is impossible, as the height of the hull is 13 meter.
A dutch company (airborne) was involved in composite propellers for RNLN minesweepers(about 50 meters, hand layup!) Very interesting as these can bend to optimised shapes under load, becoming more efficient.
(last I’ve heard was that they came in without the prop blades attached to the ship though.)
The same company is involved with tubing for the oil and gas industry. Composite tubing is used in more industrial applications.
Nothing is impossible. Increase the pressure in the building, obviously.
Thanks, indeed that would be the easy solution…
One of my next projects to manage could be tooling for an 80+m blade. Just finished a project for an 57m and working on a 50m currently.
Flatbed project. Tons of weight savings, and metal fatigue is a thing of the past. Almost 1" thick top and bottom sections.
We make parts for the underground mining industry where parts need to be light weight, antistatic, flame resistant and not made from aluminium. We have some crazy projects underway for the mines that (we hope) will change the game.
I believe that “industrial composites” (don’t know if that’s a real term) will be the future. As production of composite raw materials has increased the price has dropped allowing new markets to open up.
I’d love to make a carbon trailer with carbon wheels.
Most heavy stuff is made with glass, as the cost would otherwise be prohibitive, and the part could not compete with steel or concrete in terms of cost.
Are most of these applications that take regular impacts just sufficiently thick to deal with impact loads as opposed to having toughened resins, etc, as Id assume that toughened resins?
Surely only a matter of time before glass structural members are commonplace in personal housings too
In Amsterdam a couple of contracters use carbon strips to stiffen floor beams. These are glued on during renovation. The normal procedure is to just use higher beams, but the low ceilings sometimes make them go the carbon route.
In heavy industry price is an issue, so in most cases polyester resin is used. In that case, impact, if present, must be taking into consideration.
It is usually the more high tech applications which use epoxy.
Oh yeah, polyester-sorry total blond moment there suggesting epoxy!
We use pre preg as it is cheaper than dry fibre and polyester or epoxy, it works out about the same price as the fibre alone thus saving the resin cost. Then we don’t have the added costs of labour to apply it, wasted resin and the many health and environmental hazards. It is possible that the cheaper costs are due to everything needing to be imported into New Zealand as there are no fibre manufacturers here. Plus we can use lower skilled workers to place the fibre again reducing costs.
The cost for pre preg comes in processing such as the moulds and autoclave, but these pay off in a couple of years by offsetting the labour costs. We offer a cook service where other companies bring parts to us to cook. Which if you can find someone to do will mean you don’t need your own autoclave.
With our parts, underground mining vent tubes, weight is the number 1 design goal and then very very closely followed by cost. By filament winding the existing tubes weigh 35kg. We use pre preg carbon and Nomex core which means that our tubes end up at 9kg. I also have a new product sitting next to me that will see 120,000kg of load, ours is 26kgs compared to the current parts weight of 100kg.
Composite parts will cost more than steel but customers need to understand the savings that can be made by having lighter and or stronger product. One mine has estimated that our tubes have saved them 40 shifts of work in the first year of using them and the make something like $US300,000 per hour. If you can make a truck 50% lighter any greater costs will be offset by lower fuel costs and increased capacity.
It totally depends on application. For your pipes, it seems that weight is a more important factor, and pipes fit nicely in an autoclave.
But fitting a road bridge in an autoclave, or the roof pictured below, will be a bit of a problem:
Other big stuff, now with pictures:
-roof Yitzak Rabin centre, Tel Aviv
-Composite rotorblades (75 meters)
-Composite bridges, 160tons working load
-Composite gate doors (for locks)
Advantage is that the door can be weighted such that it does not sink or rise, dramatically reducing wear on the hinges. And it is virtually maintenance free. No rot (wood) or corrosion (steel)
-Composite architecture (mostly cladding of buildings). Top part of this building is polyester.
Cladding of this building will be polyester
2 of the units finished: (another 1500 or so to go…)
-Composite minesweepers and sonar domes
sonardome production is the slut of the dutch composite industry, nearly every company has done it. Now at adel polyester.
For sure the application makes a big bearing on the choice of manufacturing technique. But the argument that pre preg is more expensive doesn’t always hold water and as more development is put into out of autoclave pre preg there will be more applications that it will be suitable.
In New Zealand there is very little in the way of large scale manufacturing other than super yachts, so the opportunities are very limited for local products. Thus most things need to be able to be shipped overseas. After the earthquakes in Christchurch a year ago we did think there might be a chance to make some composite infrastructure, but the company in charge owns concrete plants so everything will be concrete which will be a shame. They aren’t even looking at wrapping damaged buildings with carbon.
In Italy they wrap old buildings in carbon / aramide, to protect them from further damage.
As for cost of prepreg: It is hard to compete with polyester / glass, which has RT cure, and a target price of 6 euro / kg (processed). However, in specific applications it can be beneficial, especially if product weight adds a lot to installed price. (for bridges, it is not really the weight that matters so much during installation. Due to the size you need a crane anyhow)
