Qarbon Aerospace ships first completed carbon fiber HEXA eVTOL aircraft!

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Qarbon Aerospace has announced the completion and delivery of the first HEXA, LIFT Aircraft’s electric vertical takeoff, and landing (eVTOL) aircraft, produced by Qarbon Aerospace. HEXA’s carbon-fiber structure was manufactured at Qarbon Aerospace’s Thailand facility, with final assembly and integration performed in Red Oak."

"Qarbon Aerospace is a provider of large, complex composite and metallic structural components, and assemblies such as fuselages, wings, flight control surfaces, and engine nacelles and components. Qarbon Aerospace operates nearly two million square feet of factory space across three facilities located in Red Oak, Texas, Milledgeville, Georgia, and Rayong, Thailand, with vertically integrated manufacturing capabilities from component fabrication through the large-scale assembly as well as proprietary thermoplastics technologies."

Source:#managingcomposites

CST composites targets green hydrogen supply chain

 After 26 years in business, Australia’s CST Composites is positioning itself to be a leading player in the global green hydrogen supply chain through a joint venture with US-based hydrogen storage tank manufacturer Optimum Composite Technologies.

The joint venture will see CST Composites expand its core capabilities to support the growth of Optimum’s business in designing and producing Composite Pressure Vessels (CPVs), which are used to store hydrogen and Renewable Natural Gas (RNG) and have many other applications.

CST has two manufacturing facilities in Australia and the growth plans include establishing Australia’s first hydrogen vessel manufacturing facility, which will service emerging and growing demand from the defence (e.g. VTOL vehicles), space (e.g. rockets), transport and energy sectors.

This manufacturing facility will help advance Australia’s National Hydrogen Strategy, which highlights the need to develop the country’s supply chain infrastructure, including hydrogen storage tanks. High-pressure storage tanks at low cost will be a crucially important part of transport, building backups and many other aspects of hydrogen adoption.

The joint venture will complement both companies’ manufacturing abilities. CST Composites will have access to Optimum’s technical expertise and Intellectual Property (IP) in carbon fibre pressure vessels. CST Composites will also gain greater access to US markets for its high quality, filament-wound composite tubing by leveraging Optimum’s US facilities, customer base and supply chain.

CST Composites managing director, Clive Watts, said “High-pressure gas storage vessels is one of the biggest and fastest-growing markets globally for advanced composites, particularly for filament-wound carbon fibre composites”.

Recent significant corporate developments include South Korean Hanwha Solutions’ acquisition of US hydrogen storage tank manufacturer Cimarron Composites and its plans to invest US$100 million to expand the business.

The Australian Government is investing $1.4 billion to position Australia as a major hydrogen player by 2030. Mr Watts said “we will be applying for the grants and financial support available to advance our projects, which focus on the innovative design and development of hydrogen and CPV products. We are planning to make a significant investment to grow our new joint venture”.

CST Composites is a leader in filament winding technology and 90 per cent of its products are exported to Europe, the US, China and Asia. All of its profiles and tubing are currently manufactured at its high-tech facilities in Sydney. The company was a recent recipient of funding under Round 2 of the Australian Government’s Manufacturing Modernisation Fund.

Source:CST COMPOSITES

The main properties of Composite materials

 📢Time to Get Technical...📢

Let's learn more about the main properties of composite materials!

As you may know, the characteristics/properties of composite materials resulting from the combination of reinforcement and matrix depend on the proportions of reinforcements and matrix, the form of the reinforcement, and the fabrication process.

But what are the most remarkable properties of these materials?

- Composite materials generally possess very high specific mechanical properties.

- Composite materials do not yield: their elastic limits correspond to the rupture limit.

- Composite materials have high strength under fatigue loads.

- Composite materials age under the action of moisture and heat.

- Composite materials do not corrode, except in the case of contact aluminum with carbon fibers in which galvanic phenomenon creates rapid corrosion.

- Composite materials are not sensitive to the common chemicals used in engines: grease, oils, hydraulic liquids, paints and solvents, petroleum. However, cleaners for paint attack the epoxy resins.

- Composite materials have medium- to low-level impact resistance (inferior to that of metallic materials).

- Composite materials have excellent fire resistance as compared with the light alloys with identical thicknesses. However, the smoke emitted from the combustion of certain matrices can be toxic.

But how do they fair against each other when it comes to specific strength in different temperatures? Which composites can be used in high-temperature applications?

Bibliographical Reference:

Composite Materials Design and Applications - Page 16

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composites in Aerospace

 2022 Technologies in Aerospace Composite Process

Composites are used in the #aerospaceindustries; those are termed #aerospace composite. The composite materials are light in weight. The lightweight of composite structural aerospace parts helps reduce the overall weight of the aircraft, thereby leading to a better weight ratio. The structural parts manufactured using composites tend to be light in weight and possess high strength. Composites are used to make various parts of #aircraft like engine blades, interiors, and nacelles.

DYNAPIXEL

 📢Saturday Spotlight!📢 DYNAPIXEL tool!

Cikoni is trying to solve a recurrent problem in the composites industry: the high costs of the tools and molds that are necessary for every fiber composite manufacturing technology and for every new geometry to be built.

This is where the reconfigurable DYNAPIXEL tool system comes in. By means of a discretization of the tool surface with actuated pins, rapid prototypes or customer-specific components can be created without recurring tooling costs. An elementary constituent for the efficient use of the tool is a closed digital process chain. The DYNAPIXEL software uses script-based generation of support points directly in CAD and the seamless transfer of this data to the control

software of the DYNAPIXEL tool. This also enables the fast, adaptive production of components.

DYNAPIXEL also uses a silicone membrane, which can be used as a laminating surface and with molding processes up to 180°C. For double-diaphragm forming, you would enter the CAD data, let the software actuate the mold geometry, apply a vacuum to draw down the silicone surface on top, laminate the composite plies, close the matched mold with a second membrane and complete the cure.

Surface finish has not been a driving issue because DYNAPIXEL was developed as a tool to speed R&D. Cikoni's goal was to produce additional molds and design iterations without much additional cost. "Once you freeze the part design, you would then switch to CNC-machined metal molds. You can also use this as a performing tool", says Farbod Nezami, one of CIKONI’s co-founders.

Source: CompositesWorld

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New polymer membrane tech improves the efficiency of carbon dioxide capture

Researchers have developed a new membrane technology that allows for more efficient removal of carbon dioxide (CO2) from mixed gases, such as emissions from power plants.

"To demonstrate the capability of our new membranes, we looked at mixtures of CO2 and nitrogen, because CO2/nitrogen dioxide mixtures are particularly relevant in the context of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from power plants," says Rich Spontak, co-corresponding author of a paper on the work. "And we've demonstrated that we can vastly improve the selectivity of membranes to remove CO2 while retaining relatively high CO2 permeability."

"We also looked at mixtures of CO2 and methane, which is important to the natural gas industry," "In addition, these CO2-filtering membranes can be used in any situation in which one needs to remove CO2 from mixed gases—whether it's a biomedical application or scrubbing CO2 from the air in a submarine."

Membranes are an attractive technology for removing CO2 from mixed gases because they do not take up much physical space, they can be made in a wide variety of sizes, and they can be easily replaced. The other technology that is often used for CO2 removal is chemical absorption, which involves bubbling mixed gases through a column that contains a liquid amine—which removes CO2 from the gas. However, absorption technologies have a significantly larger footprint, and liquid amines tend to be toxic and corrosive.

These membrane filters work by allowing CO2 to pass through the membrane more quickly than the other constituents in the mixed gas. As a result, the gas passing out the other side of the membrane has a higher proportion of CO2 than the gas entering the membrane. By capturing the gas passing out of the membrane, you capture more of the CO2 than you do of the other constituent gases.
A longstanding challenge for such membranes has been a trade-off between permeability and selectivity. The higher the permeability, the more quickly you can move gas through the membrane. But when permeability goes up, selectivity goes down—meaning that nitrogen, or other constituents, also pass through the membrane quickly—reducing the ratio of CO2 to other gases in the mixture. In other words, when selectivity goes down you capture relatively less CO2.

The research team, from the U.S. and Norway, addressed this problem by growing chemically active polymer chains that are both hydrophilic and CO2-philic on the surface of existing membranes. This increases CO2 selectivity and causes a relatively little reduction in permeability.
"In short, with little change in permeability, we've demonstrated that we can increase selectivity by as much as about 150 times," says Marius Sandru, co-corresponding author of the paper and senior research scientist at SINTEF Industry,

Another challenge facing membrane CO₂ filters has been cost. The more effective previous membrane technologies were, the more expensive they tended to be.

"Because we wanted to create a technology that is commercially viable, our technology started with membranes that are already in widespread use," says Spontak. "We then engineered the surface of these membranes to improve selectivity. And while this does increase the cost, we think the modified membranes will still be cost effective."

"Our next steps are to see the extent to which the techniques we developed here could be applied to other polymers to get comparable, or even superior, results; and to upscale the nanofabrication process," Sandru says. "Honestly, even though the results here have been nothing short of exciting, we haven't tried to optimize this modification process yet. Our paper reports proof-of-concept results."

The researchers are also interested in exploring other applications, such as whether the new membrane technology could be used in biomedical ventilator devices or filtration devices in the aquaculture sector.

The researchers say they are open to working with industry partners in exploring any of these questions or opportunities to help mitigate global climate change and improve device function.

Source:Journal Science

My Presentation On Composite HYDROGEN/CNG/LPG CYLINDER MANUFACTURING will be held on 25th April 2022

 https://www.linkedin.com/events/carbon-glassfibercompositesgrow6915555335957061632/