JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #39 - March/April 2008 - 67

THE WORLD’S LEADING COMPOSITES HUB Nominee: Mobile Lockers Services (France) Design and sales of safety lockers for leisur e facilities Partnership Network: Eurl Patrice (France) Product design support (choice of materials) Name of Product or Process: The Parasol. Description: Many outdoor activities require participants to change into sports gear and store their clothes and bags for a few hours. This need is very poorly met at beaches and during occasional sports events. The Parasol is a cylinder that can be installed on the ground. It contains 45 lockers and has an overhanging kiosk-type roof that also serves as a rudimentary shelter. Since it is meant to stay out of doors in the sun and rain, sometimes on beaches in a saline environment, composites were a natural choice for the materials. The definitive surface aspect is either the unfinished composite or a printed fabric under a transparent gelcoat. Nominee: Chomarat (France) Industrial reinforcements, textiles & plastics, clothing, solution designer Partnership Network: Dynastar (F) Ski manufacturer Name of Product or Process: Rotagrid and Rovispace reinforcements used to manufacture skis. Description: These are flat or thermoformed glass/epoxy reinforcements that are designed to confer specific properties to the ski, such as longitudinal stiffness or torsional strength, without adding weight to the ski and without interfering with the manufacturing process (the skis are injection moulded in polyurethane foam). The line includes three products: Rotagrid unidirectional flat scrim with fibres at 0/90°, Rotagrid ± 45° flat scrim with fibres at ±45° to the longitudinal axis, and Rovispace, which is like the unidirectional Rotagrid, but top-hat shaped. ENERGY AND INDUSTRY Winner: AGY (USA) Partnership Network: A&P Technology (USA) Braid manufacturer, Accelerator Technology Corporation (USA) Composite manufacturer. Name of Product or Process: High-field superconducting magnet for supercollider applications: high-performance magnet with a design field of 12 Tesla (pushed to 16) and current densities of about 3 kA/mm2 to 4.2 K (close to absolute zero). Description: The magnets consist of metal or ceramic superconductor coil windings made of very fine filaments. The required electrical insulation between the filaments is provided by glass filaments. Due to the properties required by scientists and the considerable forces applied in the coil (Lorentz force of 200 MPa), the coil must be meticulously designed and built. In the case at hand, the superconductor is a ceramic and the glass filaments must be very thin. Advantages or Salient Features: The glass fibre used must meet the mechanical criteria and also withstand the entire coil manufacturing process, which includes a heat cycle. The filaments used are only 5 µm in diameter, so as to take up as little space as possible in the coil (necessary due to the high magnetic field). A special sizing was used, with the right friction properties for processing, non-heat-degradable, and capable of withstanding temperature peaks during operation in case of unexpected quench failure. This required electric-insulating and heat-conducting properties. A 5-µm-thick S-2 fibre was used with a 933 high-temperatureresistant thermoplastic coating, a technology borrowed from the aerospace industry. The braiding also had to be adapted specifically to the requirement for electrical insulation, by completely covering the ceramic superconductor. The assembly is held together with epoxy resin. State of development: The filament and sizing have been developed and the material is available in quantity. This initial development phase was completed in response to a request from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) concerning the magnets for the future supercollider. The application has a broader field than this basic research need, however. Superconducting magnets are used more and more in magnetic resonance imaging (RMI) for medical purposes, due to new analytical techniques that require these high fields. Magnetic fields can also be used to target and destroy cancerous tumours. Another application field is the storage of electricity. Superconductivity allows storing vast quantities of energy. Such coils could be used to tide over production during peaks in consumption. Long-term applications. More speculatively, powerful magnetic fields could be used to protect space vehicles from radiation during long trips, for example to Mars. No39 March-April 2008 / JEC Composites Magazine

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JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #39 - March/April 2008

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