JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #83 - August/September 2013 - 34

official partner

awards

JEC Innovation Awards Program 2013:
lnnovation awards winners
Official media supports

10 companies and their partners will receive awards at the inaugural JEC Americas Composites Show and Conferences at the
Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, October 2-4, 2013.

“Intelligent” release liners for prepreg manufacturing
Most manufacturers provide a technical
description of their products. Gascogne
Laminates goes even further, offering a dedicated product range for each end-use market
that focuses on the specific requirements of
aerospace, wind energy, sports & leisure and
automotive applications. Because the use of
release liners varies from one end-use market
to another, Gascogne Laminates experts
identified the specific criteria and required
levels of performance (handling, processing,
inertness, etc.) to optimally satisfy the requirements of each market. This allowed them
to create “intelligent” release solutions. The

result is an innovative range of release liners
that features optimum performance levels and
reliability for each dedicated end-use market.
Therein lies the added value of the innovation. Developing the line was a four-phase
process: 1) gaining better knowledge of the
market, i.e. understanding the usage, issues
and requirements of customers, end-users,
machine manufacturers and thermoset resin
suppliers; 2) selecting the suitable criteria for
each end-use market; 3) assessing the current
offer based on these criteria and developing
the products that needed to be added to the
range; and 4) acquiring a state-of-the-art

Specially developed beam element with composite cross-sections
Composite materials have been widely used
in beam-like structures, typically airplane
wings and wind turbine blades. However,
analysing such structures using generalpurpose FEA is not easy. There are few tools
available to predict the fatigue life of these
composite structures which motivated the
creation of an FEA program called HyBeam.
Usually, designers have to build a full 3D model of the wing or blade to be analysed using
shell or layered elements. A micromechanicsbased fatigue module enables life prediction
of composite materials with any fibre-matrix
combination, fibre volume fraction and layup
sequence, once fatigue behaviours of fibre,
matrix and interface are known. Compared
to conventional macroscopic approaches, this
method requires much less testing for mate-

rial characterization, and thus could reduce
costs considerably.
HyBeam provides designers and engineers a
quick way of modelling beam-like composite
structures, evaluating their response to static
loading, natural frequencies & mode shapes.
Therefore, the overall design can be optimized at an early stage to reduce both cost
and potential risk in detailed design. Especially, the unique capability of micromechanics-based fatigue life prediction could greatly
reduce the number of fatigue tests needed, for
lower cost and a shorter design phase.
Many of the desired features have already
been implemented, and there is an on-going
upgrade process to make the product more
powerful without sacrificing user friendliness.

34 jec composites magazine / No83 August - September 2013

Supply chain
Winner: Gascogne Laminates (France)
machine (€11 million) capable of manufacturing the silicone-coated release liners needed
to provide customers with optimum quality
and reliability. This innovation covers all
thermoset prepreg applications for the aerospace, wind energy, automotive and sporting
equipment sectors.

R&D, Design
Winner: Hanyang University
(Republic of Korea)
Partnership Network: Stanford University
(US), NUS (Singapore)

Potential users include designers and structural engineers working on wind turbine blades,
airplane wings, yacht mast & rigging, etc.
JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #83 - August/September 2013

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