Victrex and Coriolis Composites work together to push the limits of pre-dip layup and consolidation of thermoplastic unidirectional tape (TP UDT) to increase the productivity of composite parts. At the 2019 JEC World Technology Conference in Paris, they will jointly demonstrate their efforts to address a key challenge in the aerospace industry: how to manufacture composite parts at high speeds and low processing temperatures.

Coriolis Composites and Victrex each use their own specific technology and expertise to collaborate to unlock the potential parameters of the VICTREX AE TM 250UDT using an automated fiber placement (AFP) process, enabling aerospace OEMs and engineers in the grade and processor supply chain We benefit. In particular, cooperation in composite process development can enable the aerospace industry to manufacture composite parts faster and more economically.

The results of this study are unprecedented in terms of the rate of laydown at acceptable porosity levels for TP UD laminates. This is a decisive move to expand the manufacturing scale and realize the advantages of TP UD tape. The VICTREX AE 250 UDT allows manufacturers to exceed the speed of existing TP UDTs for the same application and is comparable to thermocouple's automatic fiber placement/automated tape placement (AFP/ATL) deposition rates without the need for thermoset UDTs ( TS UDT) Requires long-term autoclave consolidation.

“In the demonstration process, we will show how to use UDC prepreg tape based on VICTREX AE 250 to achieve faster laying speed after non-autoclave (OoA) consolidation. Our results are similar to ours in TP. The results seen on the UD tape have improved significantly,” concludes Dr. Stuart Green, Technical Manager, Aerospace Marketing, Victrex.

VICTREX AE 250 UDT: Efficient production for in situ and non-autoclave consolidation

The key to the collaboration is to jointly provide an optimized AFP process that delivers impressive time and energy savings in in-situ and “non-autoclave” (OoA) consolidation compared to other polyketone UD tapes for similar applications. Advantage.

“We developed a range of time and energy savings that demonstrate the potential benefits of deploying AE 250 UDT composites for large structural aircraft parts,” said Dr. Justin Merotte, a composite project engineer at Coriolis Composites. “In particular, the results show that the use of VICTREX AE 250 UDT can significantly increase the layup speed while achieving the low porosity required for in-situ consolidation.”

VICTREX AE 250 UDT is a unique high performance thermoplastic composite prepreg tape designed by Victrex with typical mechanical, physical and chemical resistance to polyaryletherketone (PAEK) polymer series (eg PEEK) but crystallized The melting temperature was lowered by 40 ° C, only 305 ° C.