Gurit, has announced the launch of SparPreg featuring Airstream Technology at Wind Power 2012 in Atlanta.
SparPreg featuring their Airstream coating technology is a specialised prepreg developed to enable the economic manufacture of high quality UD spar caps using advanced glass and carbon fibres. Airstream products address the problem of creating a very high quality, low void content laminate without the use of expensive automated equipment or a temperature controlled environment. With fast deposition rates and no requirement for intermediate de-bulking steps, glass and carbon prepreg technology is now readily accessible for all wind turbine blade manufacturers.
The main load bearing structure of a wind turbine blade is the spar component which is either integrated into a structural shell as a spar cap, or constructed in parallel production to the shell as a separate spar structure complete with shear webs
What is common to both approaches is that the utilisation of unidirectional fibre (UD), glass or carbon, to provide bending strength and stiffness. The quantity of UD material required is significant, resulting in laminate sections up to 50mm thick towards the root section. This provides some technical challenges when considering fibre alignment, resin content, void content, deposition rate, exotherm control, and connection to the shear web using multiaxial materials.
This product has been specially formulated to facilitate the removal of inter-ply (between the plies) air within a UD stack using standard vacuum bag processes, and without intermediate debulking stages.
Main benefits of the product include;
- Excellent handling and mould conformance characteristics from 15 to 35°C
- Extremely low void content in any thickness without the need for cold lay-up or de-bulking
- Low exotherm resin matrix enabling low Tg infusion grade tooling
- Suitable for manual, automated and semi-automated lay-up
- Available for glass or carbon unidirectional SparPreg
- High mechanical performance
Damian Bannister, Director Innovation Products and Solutions at Gurit comments;
Airstream coating technology further reduces the barriers for using high performance prepreg as a component manufacturing technology and enables our customers to design new advanced blades with confidence that the required manufacturing solutions are available.
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