anders brødsjø - airborne

Thermoplastic composites for aeronautical and automotive applications

A. Brødsjø, Research Specialist

Airborne Technology Centre, The Hague

Contents

• Thermoplastics

• Continuous winding process

• TAPAS project

• Discrete fibre placement

• Process testing

• Continuous Fibre Placement

Thermoplastics

• Group of materials from PE, PP, PA up to PEEK and PEKK

• Thermal process, no chemical reaction (in theory)

Fast process

• Low cost (PE,PP)

• High performance (PEEK, PEKK)

• High toughness, high strain

• Good chemical performance (semicrystalline)

Continuous winding process

Development:

• Shell: “Develop ideal pipe for oil & gas down hole tubing”

• Development started in 2000

• Concept study showed thermoplastic pipe is ideal

• However, production technology not available at the time

• First production line operational 2008

Current pilot line

First commercial product

Continuous winding process

New factory:

• Two production lines with multiple lay-up stations

• Finished product can be loaded onto ship for transport over water

• Located in IJmuiden sea harbour

• Building started, opening 2012

TAPAS project

• TAPAS = Thermoplastic Affordable Primary Aircraft Structure

• Airbus + NL cluster:

– Stork Fokker, Ten Cate, Airborne, DTC, KVE,

– TU Delft, Universiteit Twente, Technobis, (NLR)

TAPAS project

• Target: Raise the TRL of thermoplastics composites in order to use it for structural aircraft components

• Driver thermoplastics: cost & cycle time

– A30x = 1 tot 2 per day!

– High level of integration possible

– Secondary: toughness, impact resistance, FST properties

TAPAS project

• WP 1 Fuselage panel demonstrator

– Double curved fuselage nose skin structure of A30x (successor to A320)

– Airbus in the lead

TAPAS project

• WP 2: Torsion box demonstrator

– Torsion box of Gulfstream G650 horizontal stabilizer

– Fokker in the lead

TP Skins

6m

TP stringers

TAPAS project

Airborne’s role in within TAPAS:

• Deliver flat stringer preforms

• Manufactured with fiber placement

• “consolidated”

• Material Carbon/PEEK or Carbon/PEKK

• Length up to 3 m.

Fibre placement setup

Setup:

• Fibre placement head designed and developed at Airborne

• Features:

– 1” tape

– Cut & restart mechanism

– Suitable up to PEEK

• Head placed on existing 5-axis milling machine

• Set-up used to manufacture blanks for TAPAS torsion box demonstrator

Fibre placement setup

Robot platform:

• Large industrial robot (range 3 m, payload 360 kg, high accuracy)

• To be used as general platform for research on automation

• Fibre placement head will be modified for use on the robot in 2011-Q4

• Will be used to manufacture blanks for TAPAS fuselage demonstrator

Process testing

Approach:

• Material PEKK/AS4D tape by Cytec

• Temperature measured inside laminate with thermocouples

• Parameters (temperature, pressure, speed) varied to optimize settings per layer

• Laminate quality checked using microscope

Process testing

C-scan result:

• C-scan of first laminate shows large amount of porosity

• After autoclave consolidation porosity reduced to acceptable level

Before autoclave consolidation After autoclave consolidation

Continuous fibre placement

Concept:

• Continuous process to produce discrete rectangular profiles

• Based on continuous winding technology

• Use of connected mandrels

CFP station

Mandrel separation

Mandrel joining

saw CFP station

CFP station


Possible uses of profiles:

sawing welding or

co-consolidation

press-forming sawing


Potential markets: Aerospace

• Panel stiffeners, floor beams

– New generation single aisle will require >100km /year of stringers

– Length >10m


Potential markets: Automotive

• State of the art in composites

– Small/medium series <10/day

– Labor intensive => hand made


Potential markets: Automotive

• Crash beams, door pillars,…

– High volume cars: >100.000/year

– Competing with high strength steel and aluminium

Thank you for your attention!

anders brødsjø - airborne

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