JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #87 - March 2014 Special JEC Europe - 26

official partner

awards

JEC Innovation Awards Program 2014:
lnnovation awards winners
With more than a hundred submissions, the success of the Innovation
Awards Competition is in constant progress: never have so many highquality files been received, making the selection a very rich and complex
process. 28 countries took part in the competition, with a little more than
half coming from Europe, the rest being evenly split between America and
Asia Pacific. The subjects broached from a wide expanse of domains: from
raw materials to design and processes and of course applications.

Composite semi structural cockpit module for ATA 25

The target of this development was to
bring lightweight technologies to TRL
6 for future cockpits. The innovation is a
main control panel in composites (RTM),
replacing the current metal solution and
made of one shot molded modules (as
opposed to machined and assembled
metal units). The molding processes are
RTM or VARTM with more than 55%
carbon fibers with a new FST resin (Fire,
Smoke and Toxicity) compliant to ABD
031 requirements.
In addition to a radical change of material
from metal to high performance com-

posites (in this case continuous carbon
fibers), the new design integrates much
bigger display units that will be used in
future cockpits for a better readability
and additional weight reduction (flatter
screens than the previous A 320 technology). CFRP cockpit modules are a major
technological breakthrough in term of styling, assembly time saving, but also major
weight (32%) and cost (30%) reductions
compared to current cockpit metal work.
The functionalities are also improved:
aesthetics, acoustics (solid instead of
perforated walls) as are safety and airwor-

Braidsim is a stand-alone application
that enables any engineer to get familiar
with circular braiding, without the need
to commission capital-intensive braiding
equipment.The Braidsim software can be
licensed and customized where needed.

Design
Winner: Hutchinson (France)
Partner(s): AIRBUS (France)

thiness. Thanks to this development, the
innovation is mature enough to be built
for composite cockpits for OEMs like
Airbus, Dassault, etc.

Simulation

Braiding simulation and optimization
Circular braiding is used to manufacture
tubular structural components. Examples
are automobile and aircraft frame parts.
The software named 'Braidsim' was developed at the University of Twente to run a
process simulation in just a few minutes.

Press partners

With a Braidsim license, the potential for
the user is to save cost associated with
time-consuming trial-and-error on a physical braiding machine.
Simulation can help to decide if braiding
is a feasible production process for a given
part design. Engineers can use simulation
to explore a wide variety of 'what-if'-scenarios, including different product geometries, fiber architectures and machine
configurations. Potential production
problems can be detected in advance.
Simulation can be embedded in the vir-

26 jec composites magazine / No87 March 2014

Winner: University of Twente
(Netherlands)
Partner(s): National Aerospace Laboratory, Eurocarbon (Netherlands)

tual process chain to generate optimized
braiding machine control data and files for
downstream analysis like resin infusion
and structural performance.

http://ww.cytec.com

JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #87 - March 2014 Special JEC Europe

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #87 - March 2014 Special JEC Europe