It Turns out that Aircraft Composite Materials Rely on Vacuum Assisted Molding

 

Composite Materials

The changing demands of the civil aviation market and increasingly stringent emission reduction rules have put forward higher requirements for civil aviation passenger aircraft. Under the premise of ensuring the design strength, the structure of the aircraft is designed to be lighter and lighter to achieve more operating benefits and lower energy consumption.

 

As a new type of material, composite materials have the advantages of light weight, good tensile strength, and fatigue resistance. They have replaced traditional metal materials in large quantities and become a very important and large part of the aircraft structure.

 

Compared with traditional metal materials, the production process of composite materials is completely different. As the name implies, composite materials are structures composed of multiple materials interlaced and combined, so they need to be directly compounded according to the required shape, rather than cut and processed like metal materials.

 

Vacuum Assisted Molding

Composite materials are usually formed by curing after fiber infiltration of resin. The resin needs to be stretched and distributed according to the required part shape, and then the resin is made to flow through each area of ​​the distributed fiber in the infiltrated part to finally become the desired finished product.

 

 

 

The flow and penetration of resin requires the assistance and guidance of vacuum. The air in the gaps of fiber materials will hinder the flow of resin and affect the properties of resin. Using vacuum to remove air can introduce resin into every tiny gap, so that the resin can fully cover the entire component.

 

In order to achieve sufficient guiding ability, the vacuum degree is usually required to be better than 50mbar. However, the flow of viscous resin is mainly affected by the viscosity determined by its own temperature, and the process of filling and infusing resin is usually longer. The production process will require a reasonable fluidity, so a reasonable temperature will be required. The resin is usually slightly hot during the infusion process.

 

Atlas Copco Vacuum Assistance

The infusion process takes a long time and has high vacuum requirements, requiring a vacuum pump to provide a long-term stable vacuum degree. A vacuum pump that is too small cannot reach the vacuum degree, affecting the process and product quality of the molding process; a vacuum pump that is too large can provide the required vacuum degree, but it cannot speed up the molding speed, wasting energy in vain.

 

Atlas Copco provides the GVC series intelligent rotary vane vacuum pump group for this purpose.

 

It has the function of intelligent adjustment, which can automatically adjust the capacity of the vacuum pump group according to the vacuum demand.

 

During the infusion process, the pump group will maintain a relatively stable required vacuum degree due to the limitation of resin fluidity, while reducing power consumption

 

During the initial stage of infusion, the pump group is fully operational and does not hesitate to allow the entire mold cavity to reach the required vacuum degree in a relatively short time

 

The GVC intelligent rotary vane pump group is designed to be reliable and stable, and easy to maintain. The pump group can be maintained while in operation without delaying the user’s production