Development of equipment to produce semifinished recyclable off axis fibre reinforced thermoplastic material

该项目旨在开发设备，以适合大规模市场生产的速度连续生产具有可变纤维取向的半成品可回收离轴热塑性层压板。生产不同角度的纤维增强连续胶带是一种创新，是对目前使用手工铺布技术的重大改进。这一创新将允许热塑性材料取代钢，用于目前热塑性塑料制造方法产量过高的结构应用，因为提议的机器可以生产225平方米/小时，与目前的技术水平相比非常有利。实验室研究表明，部件的质量将减少50%以上，同时保持并在某些情况下改善材料的机械性能。所建议的设备提供的生产率的提高不仅打开了大规模生产市场，而且与目前的方法相比，也大大降低了制造价格。在如此高的产量下，半成品材料的加工成本将低至每平方米30便士，而钢铁制造的同等产品的加工成本为每平方米1.05英镑。所提出的热塑性聚合物具有优异的材料性能，如高冲击强度、耐环境、可再成形性、可回收性和隐身应用能力。该项目的主要目标是开发能够以真正的工业规模为汽车和航空航天部门生产部件的设备，减少生产时间，降低成本，并具有卓越的强度重量比。最终产品将有更低的燃料消耗，并减少最终用户的碳足迹，无论是驾驶者还是飞机。进一步的目标是避免对金属的依赖来生产这些部件，并用这台机器的输出来取代它。

This project aims to develop equipment to continuously produce semi-finished recyclable offaxis hermoplastic laminate with variable fibre orientations at a rate suitable for mass market production. The production of continuous tape with fibre reinforcement at varying angles is innovative and a significant improvement over the current technique that utilises a manual lay up. This innovation will allow thermoplastic materials to replace steel in structural applications where production volumes are too high for current manufacturing methods of thermoplastics, as the proposed machine can produce 225m2/h, which compares very favourably to the current state of the art. Laboratory studies indicate that the mass of the component will be reduced by more than 50% while maintaining and in some cases improving material mechanical properties.The increase in production rates which the proposed equipment provides not only opens up the mass production markets but also considerably brings down the price of manufacture compared with current methods. With such high production volumes the processing costs will be as little as 30p per m2 of semi-finished material compared with £1.05 for the equivalent product made from steel. The proposed thermoplastic polymer has excellent material properties such as high impact strength, environmental resistance, re-formability, recyclability and the capability of being used in stealth applications.The key objectives of this project are to develop equipment that will produce components for the automotive and the aerospace sector on a truly industrial scale with reduced production time, reduced cost and with the added benefit of superior strength to weight ratio. End products will have lower fuel consumption and reduce the carbon footprint for end users be it motorist or airliners. A further objective is to avoid the dependency on metal for the production of such components and replace it with the output from this machine.