The use of aluminium for the mold was successful, the energy consumption was lower than what it would have been with steel, given the thickness of the mold reducing the ecological impact in future production. Moreover the automation of equipment for RTM injection was tested with now a more repetitive and faster composite manufacturing. In addition, as the production cost is reduced, the serial production in low cost countries is less interesting and production in Europe stay very competitive. Now Coexpair is currently supplying all RTM production equipment to a major Tier-1 in Aerospace sector. With these equipment and technology from Coexpair, this Tier-1 is opening the most automated composite plant in Europe.
The direct resistance process developed and validated by Tecnalia as a proof of concept was an important progress beyond the state of the art that reduced very significantly the process cycle time and the energy consumption involved. Tecnalia is now proposing this new technology to several aeronautic companies, and even equipment manufacturers, to implement this process in the preforming of different parts like ribs, leading edges etc.
ULg compared different gripping and cleaning approaches and made a selection of the most appropriate solution. Then ULg developed a new proof-of concept tool successfully tested at Coexpair in industrial conditions. However more maturation should be carried out with further testing and/or solutions based both on an improved tool design and process.
Through its involvement in improving the manufacturing process, Pégard was able to increase its productivity up to about 20% while reducing the energy required to machine materials. This gain is still limited by the intrinsic features of the machines, which are of robust and heavy design resulting in slow travel speeds. To gain more competitivity, Pégard decided to invest in the procurement of a new high-speed 5-axis SMD machine with large dimensions for machining aluminium and composite parts (from March 2020).
On a general way the positive environmental impact was reached by taking into account low cost/natural materials and eco-design considerations in the development of mold towards energy savings needed to manufacture future composite parts in production.
The automation of several steps of the RTM process shown the opportunity for developping cost effective new technologies and manufacturing while significantly decreasing the scrap rate and material waste in serial production.
