IKV: AKV Innovation Prize 2009 – „Gap impregnation process for the high-volume production of FRP parts”

AKV Innovation Prize 2009 in the Academic Category
Kai Fischer of the IKV Institute of Plastics Processing at RWTH Aachen University has won the AVK Innovation Award 2009 in the Academic Category. During the annual AVK conference in Stuttgart, he was awarded the prize for his investigations into the automatic and large-series production of continuous fibre reinforced plastics (FRP) by gap impregnation. The prize money for the award is EUR 1100.

The gap impregnation process is a variant of the well-established resin injection process (Resin Transfer Moulding, RTM). The IKV has been conducting research into the process through the former IKV engineers Tom Wassenberg, Sven Meyer-Noack and Ingo Kleba since 2001, initially testing it on a laboratory scale. Kai Fischer´s investigations led to the further development of the process and plant technology for the production of highly-integrated sandwich structures and for the production of an automated production process on an industrial scale. To this end, a gap impregnation unit (Photo) was developed in cooperation with Hille Engineering, Aachen, and installed in the IKV´s Development Plant.

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Fully automatic process
This gap impregnation unit, employed in combination with a newly developed mould, gives rise to a fully automatic process. For component manufacturing, a preform is inserted into a mould, then impregnated with a liquid resin, and finally cured. The innovative feature here is rapid impregnation through the creation of a temporary flow gap, followed by the subsequent compression of the impregnated preforms by means of pressing and squeezing. Through the development of an automatic gap impregnation unit in combination with an analysis of the manufacturing process, it was possible for the IKV to impregnate and compress parts measuring 500 x 500 mm2 with a fibre content of 50 per cent by volume in as little as 19 seconds. Accelerated impregnation and compression procedures also make it possible to produce parts within 280 seconds. Including the time for preparatory measures, cycle times of less than ten minutes can then be achieved. This made a key contribution to achieving a production process for continuous fibre reinforced plastic parts that was suitable for series production. The process and plant technology can be used in automotive engineering and also in the aviation and aerospace industries to produce two-dimensional structural and outer skin components.

Photo: The gap impregnation plant will be presented to the specialist audience from the plastics sector at the IKV´s 25th International Plastics Technology Colloquium on 3 and 4 March 2010. (Photo: IKV / www.martin-grolms.de)

More Information: www.ikv-aachen.de

Institut für Kunststoffverarbeitung, Aachen, Germany

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