JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #76 - October/November 2012 - 38

awards

official partner

JEC Innovation Awards Program 2012:
lnnovation awards winners
Official media supports Nine companies and their partners will receive awards at the inaugural JEC Americas Composites Show and Conferences at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, Nov. 7 – 9, 2012. Set against the backdrop of this premiere composites conference in the Americas, JEC’s Innovation Awards Program will highlight the most cutting-edge advances to emerge from the world-wide composite industry this year.

HexMC®: A technology based on a new form of discontinuous carbon fibre prepreg to produce structural parts by compression molding
The aerospace version of HexMC® starts with a very well characterized (AS4/8552) aerospace-grade unidirectional (UD) prepreg that is slit and cut into 50 x 8-mm wide “chips.” The chips are then used to form a transverse isotropic mat, which has the same properties in any direction within the plane of the material. The created mat is easily preformed and is equivalent in thickness to a quasi-isotropic laminate made of eight UD plies, and therefore greatly reduces labor. The HexMC® material form and associated processing techniques preserve the fiber orientation (and fiber volume) while molding the parts by “flowing” (moving) the chips slightly under pressure and temperature. The low flow of the HexMC® chips also allows the preforms to fill the mold boundaries producing “net-shape” parts and eliminating expensive trimming required with other molding processes. Parts are in the press for about twenty minutes, much less than traditional aerospace composite materials and processes.

Aeronautics
Winner: Hexcel (USA) Partnership Network: The Boeing Company (USA); GE Honda Aero Engines Ltd. (Japan)

A new structural architecture for automobiles starting with the Edison2 In wheel suspension.
While automotive composites excel in terms of strength-to-weight ratios, they have traditionally been less competitive in terms of price and cycle times. Edison’s in wheel suspension reduces the automobile to four main structural points, driven from two bulkheads that can be stamped metal or cast. Castings, in particular, can be made more intricate and include redundant smaller cavities and brackets. Intricate shapes and hard connection points where materials mix both challenge composites materials. By reducing the main structural points to simple cast members, Edison’s new architecture allows the center of the car to be very simple large surface single material affair. This sort of structure is where composites excel, and may well enable the materials to take a much larger share of the automobile market simply by reducing the complication of requirements. In an accident, composite-made cars always loose the battle of momentum. Essentially cars built on Edison’s architecture would act like Indianapolis 500 racecars or F1 cars that protect the driver and passenger at all costs while giving up the attached parts. This technology works in racing and will also work on the highway.

Automotive
Winner: Edison2 LLC (USA)

38 jec composites magazine / No76 October - November 2012

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JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #76 - October/November 2012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #76 - October/November 2012