Nowadays the development of aerospace industry needs much more strict demand on the life cycle cost and weight reduction. One of the crucial challenges is making a structure as light as possible without sacrificing its strength. Composites, particularly carbon fiber-reinforced plastic (CFRP), has been used in aircraft designing for years. sandwich structures are the preferable choice for such designs. PMI foam, which is the best suitable structural core material because of its excellent properties, has long been used in the aerospace industry. Cashem’s high performance PMI foam core Cascell® can meets the requirements from the market. Cascell® WH and Cascell®RS provide optimized cell size for resin absorption and mechanical properties, the correspondent composites can be made through autoclave, RTM or heat molding. It is able to withstand the curing temperature of 180 ℃ and compressions of 0.8Mpa without significant creep. The high-temperature resistance of PMI foam also enables the co-curing with the carbon or glass fiber, which dramatically reduce the production time.
Countries from all over the world have given the deadline for the abandoning the fuel vehicles. Environment issue and the shortage of fossil energy force the government to make the decision, the lightweight of automobile have become the primary direction for auto makers. The advantages of sandwich composite solutions in automobile are obvious. Lighter designs result in lower fuel consumption, higher payloads and longer range, which all having a positive influence on the environment. Composite materials are also more durable. The PMI-based structural foam Cascell® saves enormous weight in car bodies. PMI foam can be used in such an application because of the properties below: Easily be shaped into 3D geometry with CNC or thermoforming process； Composites parts can be manufactured by Autoclave, Vacuum bagged, RTM, and VARI, etc.； Superb resin absorption due to the fine cell size, the excellent balance between mechanical properties and light-weight can be obtained.
Radar devices, which regards to the eye of the aircraft, have much more precise navigation and positioning functions than others. It now becomes an essential part in the aircraft. The dielectric properties of PMI foam are similar to air, so it is suited for radome and antenna applications. Thanks to the easily shaped properties of PMI foam, Radomes can match the shape of the aircraft, like plane, helicopter or unmanned air vehicle, and gain the excellent mechanical strength.
For metro and train, frequent starts and stops consume a lot of energy, weight reduction of the whole bodies can decrease the energy demand efficiently. Composite sandwich structures in the floor, ceilings and side walls of railcars made with structural core can reduce weight more than 30%.
Composites made of carbon/glass fiber and foam cores have become the new choice for the sports equipment. The rigid and strong PMI foam is an ideal material for lightweight products because it can provide the high specific strength. The capacity of obtaining complex geometry shapes by thermoforming or CNC also make it to achieve the mass production. Under the heat and pressure, durable composites parts, which have extremely low weight but high strength, can be obtained by the PMI foam and fiber with different kinds of resins. These composites are perfectly suited for sports equipments such as bicycle wheels, skis, rackets and surfboards. It is helpful for the athlete to challenge the limits of human beings.
X-ray and CT scans are used in the clinical diagnosis to inspect the body, in order to obtain the high definition images, increasing the dose of radiation is adapted, but the exposure to radiation has big risk of developing cancer or other diseases. PMI foam owns lower aluminum equivalent, it means it can get sharper image under smaller dose of radiation, X-ray and CT scans tables, which use PMI as the sandwich structure foam core, dramatically reduces the radiation exposure in diagnostic procedures. Besides the protection for patients against the radiation, high specific strength of PMI foam makes the medical beds conveniently handled by the operator.
An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), commonly known as a drone, is an aircraft without a human pilot aboard. The flight of UAVs may operate with various degrees of autonomy: either under remote control by a human operator or autonomously by onboard computers. UAV originated mostly in military applications, their use is rapidly expanding to commercial, scientific, recreational, agricultural, and other applications, such as policing, peacekeeping, and surveillance, product deliveries, aerial photography, agriculture, smuggling, and drone racing. The challenge right now is how to extend its flying range, composites with PMI foam as the sandwich structural core can dramatically reduce the weight of the UAV and offer excellent mechanical properties.
Current, Onshore blades have the lengths up to 60 meters, and the length of offshore blade can even reach to 100 meters. The increase length undoubtedly will increase the loads of the blade, which place higher structural demand for the other components. So the weight reduction of the blade is becoming more and more important. Comparing to other foam core, PMI can provide the same mechanical properties with low density, which can reduce the weight of the composites components sharply, and because of its fine cell size, resin uptake is also less.
