When I think of pultrusion, I think of a continuous process to produce lineal shapes, such as I-beams or legs for ladders. I think of it as a reverse extrusion process because reinforced fibers are pulled through a resin and into a heated die, where the resin is polymerized. An interesting new German technology called Radius Pultrusion allows the continuous production of curved reinforced profiles from endless fibers and webbing. It was just announced that the process, developed by the Thomas Group of Bremervörde, Germany, has been nominated for the prestigious Hermes technology Award, which will be given at the Hannover Messe, which will be held later this month in Germany.The innovation enables production of endless circles and arches of any radius, for example springs. When using bidirectional reinforcement, the strict orientation of the fibers can only be provided on the level that is vertical to the deflection level. For all other areas, formable webbings, or nettings are required. Thomas says it can be used for structural components of cars, trains or aircraft. Thread rods and nuts are another possibility.
A new process for laser-welding large-scale, steel-aluminum foam sandwich structures for lightweighting ships, which eliminates intermetallic phase, has been demonstrated.
A major advance in repairing composite structures combining robots and lasers bodes well for commercial aircraft such as the Boeing 787 Dreamliner and Airbus A350XWB, which contain composites in large proportions of their structures.
Against a backdrop of mounting product complexity and a need to keep a lid on development costs, companies are recognizing a need to make simulation a more integral part of the design process. In response, vendors in the CAD world are building out CAE functionality as part of their CAD suites while simulation vendors are building tighter integrations to leading CAD tools. Keith Meintjes, Ph.D., Practice Manager, Simulation and Analysis at CIMdata, Inc., joins Design News CAD Editor Beth Stackpole in this radio program to explore the new face of integrated CAD and CAE, how companies are benefitting from this tighter partnership between platforms, and how integrating CAE earlier in the development cycle pays off in optimized product designs.
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