00:00 Plymouth
Exterior
Bath
Exteriors
Bath
lab shots
Wind
turbine shots
Plymouth
lab shots
Guide Voice: In two different universities in
the South West of England, researchers are developing new ways of
creating and employing composite materials to capitalise on their
unique properties, which have made them an ideal substitute for
many traditional construction materials.
At the University of Bath, with the help of Airbus Engineers,
they are examining how they can design aircraft wing structures
made out of carbon fibre composites.
By building up layers of carbon fibre held together by epoxy
resin they create a laminate, on a mould, which is then placed into
an autoclave, which heats the laminate to about 200
degrees centigrade and applies around seven times atmospheric
pressure in order to cure the laminate. The resulting structure is
very strong, rigid, light, and capable of withstanding enormous
pressures. Even a deliberately flawed strut only starts to buckle
after 4 tonnes of pressure is applied, and breaks after five
tonnes.
00:57 SOT Dr Richard Butler, Senior
lecturer in Aircraft Structures,
University of
Bath - “Well currently about
15 – 20% of aircraft structure is made out of carbon fibre
composite material and structure for structure we can save about
30% of weight.”
01:12 CU
computer screen
Airbus
wall chart
Student
on computer
Laminates
changing shape
Guide Voice: That’s particularly
significant because for every tonne saved there are about three
thousand tonnes of fuel weight saving over the life of an aircraft.
Parts of the New Airbus A380, including the main central wing box
within the fuselage is made of composites, as too is the tail
structure. Future aircraft are set to use even more advanced
materials – the next generation Airbus passenger jet will
have wings made entirely of composites.
Another aspect of their research could open up even greater
efficiencies in the future and transform aircraft construction. By
using specially designed laminates, combined with shape changing
electrical devices called Piezoelectric fibres, they can make a
laminate change shape or morph form one position to another: Which
could mean a new approach to wing design doing away with flaps etc,
if you could actually make the wing itself change shape.
02:06 SOT Dr Richard Butler -
"Composites are ideally suited to this because we can
tailor the layers of material we can apply piece of electric
patches to induce shape change what this means for example in a
wing structure we can change the profile of a wing during cruise
and therefore optimise the performance of the wing over the cruise
of the aircraft."
02:30 Autoclave
Resin
infusion system
Vestas
wind turbines
"Once again this would introduce even greater fuel
efficiencies if you could change the shape of a wing throughout the
take off, landing or even cruising sections of a
flight."
Guide Voice: While the construction of
multi-layered laminates at the University of Bath needs an
autoclave to cook the materials, at the University of
Plymouth’s Advanced Composites Manufacturing Centre they are
recognised as a world leader in resin infusion technology, and in
training people to use it.
In this process the carbon fibre materials are laid into a
mould, then the air is drawn out to create a vacuum, which then
draws the resin in. Because these composites can be cured without
an autoclave they are much more flexible to work with, and
particularly good for large structures where an autoclave would be
impractical.
These wind turbine blades are forty metres long and made of
composite materials. They were made for Vestas Technology UK, one
of the three leading suppliers of wind turbines who work closely
with ACMC.
03:27 SOT Julian Spooner, Project Leader, ACMC,
University of Plymouth - “We’ve developed
a resin infusion process with them for manufacturing forty metre
turbine blades this has allowed the reduction in process time from
48 hours for a hand laminated blade to 24 hours with a resin
infused blade. To install this technology within the company
we’ve had a long- term training programme, training engineers
and shop floor workers.”
03:56 Composite
structures
Wind
turbines
Plymouth
lab shots
Guide Voice: Composite materials lend
themselves particularly well to the renewable energy sector as a
whole, not only for their lightness and strength, metallic turbine
blades for example would be uneconomic and would not last as long,
but composites are particularly corrosion resistant, and durable
even in a hostile environment.
Composites generally perform much better than metals in fatigue
or cyclic loading, which is what turbine blades experience for
almost all their working lives. Just some of the reasons, that
composite materials are increasingly being viewed as the
construction materials of the future.
04:31 Ends
