Ahlstrom-Munksjö develops carbon fibre based UD fabric
26 Mar '19
2 min read
Pic: Ahlstrom-Munksjö
Ahlstrom-Munksjö glass and carbon fibre composite team has been able to develop a carbon fibre based unidirectional (UD) fabric. In a UD fabric, the majority of fibres run in one direction only. The new fabric developed, can be laminated to 165 layers or even more in one shot. The previous record of infusing carbon fibre unidirectional fabric was 120 layers.
“We are really excited about the new HighFlow carbon unidirectional fabric. Our team in Mikkeli plant, Finland, did excellent work with this,” said Pekka Helynranta, vice president, building & wind of Ahlstrom-Munksjö in a company press release. “HighFlow carbon wind energy is specially designed for wind turbine blades to enable larger new generation wind turbines.
“Bigger wind turbines can generate more energy. Increase in size means also increase in blade size. To optimise power generation blades should be lightweight and stiff. Until now, there wasn’t a good solution to this. HighFlow Carbon solves this problem. By increasing the number of unidirectional fabric layers up to 165 we are able to help the customer to reach a new level of thickness on spar cap laminates. The fabric was unidirectional carbon fibre 600g/m2,” added Helynranta.
“By using Ahlstrom-Munksjö HighFlow fabrics, the infusion process itself is more reliable as there is a lower risk for unsaturated areas of carbon unidirectional fabric. In this new range of products the permeability of fabrics is totally engineerable, the flow rate and direction can be controlled. This means that customers can now forget problems related to infusion of carbon fibre fabrics,” said Helynranta.
“We have reached a high level of interest from our customers. Our customers are turbine blade manufacturers which use the blades on their own turbines or sell the blades to the big global wind turbine manufacturers. Also, design offices, which make blade designs for blade manufacturers have shown interest in our new concept,” concluded Helynranta.
Ahlstrom-Munksjö is a global leader in fibre-based materials, supplying innovative and sustainable solutions to its customers. (PC)
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