Estos días se lleva a cabo en Donostia el Congreso Nacional de Materiales Compuestos, donde se analiza el futuro de los materiales en el transporte y la industria.
El 31 de mayo de 2016, compañeros de FAGOR ARRASATE y MONDRAGON UNIBERTSITATEa asistieron en la ciudad austriaca de Mils al “Kick of meeting” del proyecto de investigación que desarrollaran junto con otra serie de empresas europeas.
El objetivo del proyecto ADVANCRTM (Development of automotive market fitted, CRTM manufacturing process) es desarrollar el proceso CRTM (Compression Resin Transfer Molding) que permitiría la fabricación de forma competitiva, componentes estructurales de fibra de carbono para automoción.
Nick Kray is no Picasso, yet his work is on display at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. A decade ago, MoMA’s design collection picked up a composite fan blade from the GE90 jet engine that Kray helped create. The blade’s onyx black sinuous curves are pleasing to look at, but for Kray they are no longer state of the art. “We are now working on the fourth generation of that technology,” Kray says.
Kray works as a consulting engineer for composite design at GE Aviation. In the 1990s, he was part of a GE high-stakes gambit to make the front fan of its largest jet engine from epoxy and carbon fibers.
People have been making things from iron and steel for more than 3,000 years. Machines built from their alloys have landed on the Moon and reached the very bottom of the ocean. But engineers like GE Aviation’s Sanjay Correa now believe that “we’re running out of headroom in metals.”
He and his team at GE say that a new class of materials called ceramic matrix composites (CMCs) is set to revolutionize everything from power generation to aviation, and allow engineers build much more powerful and efficient jet engines before the end of the decade. “This is a huge play for us,” Correa says.
Airbus and researchers at MIT are developing shape-shifting materials that could make aircraft simpler and lighter, potentially saving fuel. Made of carbon fiber composites, the materials shift between two or more shapes in response to changes in heat, air pressure, or other environmental factors. They can be integrated into aircraft easily, replacing the need for more complex hydraulic actuators, motors, and hinges. The first application might be in a jet engine’s air intake valve, which needs to adjust as the plane changes altitude.
Ayer se celebró en Miñano, la Jornada sobre oportunidades en el sector de materiales composites canadiense, organizada por la SPRI, en colaboración con la Embajada de Canadá, Hegan, Gaiker y el Parque Tecnológico de Alava.
El nexo adjunto permite acceder a las ponencias de la Jornada (hay que activar la excepción de seguridad)
El sector canadiense de materiales composites es un sector maduro que alberga aproximadamente 300 empresas y 50.000 empleados. Este sector se está posicionando como exportador y líder en muchos mercados internacionales gracias a su potencial comercial y de innovación contando con fuertes clústeres como son el aeronáutico y el de automoción, sin olvidar el de energía eólica de más reciente crecimiento. Particularmente es en el sector aeronáutico, donde Canadá tiene una gran variedad de capacidades y aplicaciones para materiales composites que incluyen: aeroestructuras, motores de turbina de gas, y sistemas mecánicos como trenes de aterrizaje.
GE has started building an advanced composites plant that will supply lightweight wing components for one of the world’s most innovative passenger planes, the Airbus A350. The jet had its maiden flight on June 14, on the eve of the Paris Airshow.
GE Aviation traditionally makes high-end composites for next-generation jet engines like the GEnx and the LEAP. But the A350 will be the first passenger jet using advanced GE composites inside its structure.
