AEROSPACE&AVIATION
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 ultrasonic inspecting of foam Sandwiches also enables the co-curing with the carbon or glass fiber, which dramatically reduce the production time.
Application
AUTOMOTIVE
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.
MEDICAL APPARATUS
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.