JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #34 - July/August 2007 - 52

USERS’ PLATFORM Successful partners g…/… Pescarolo Sport – Araldite®: a successful partnership everywhere, and so that nothing gets overlooked, Pescarolo has acquired skills in that field. The chassis is practically indestructible and has a very long service life. It actually was a change in FIA regulations requiring modifications to the chassis in use that made Henri Pescarolo take the plunge to become a builder. As Henri Pescarolo likes to joke, “The lifetime of the chassis is equal to the lifetime of the technical regulations.” Highly committed partners To reach that stage, Pescarolo Sport surrounded itself with reliable partners of established good reputation. The tests took place in Italy, near the headquarters of Camattini Meccanica, well known in the automotive sector for its expertise in composite materials, in particular, and chosen by Pescarolo to make the chassis. The chassis was designed at Pescarolo Sport’s site in the Le Mans 24-Hour Race’s research park (in France’s Sarthe department), using CATIA software. The plans were sent to Camattini, which created the moulds and then produced the ten or so different chassis parts to be assembled. To make the moulds, Camattini used materials supplied by Huntsman Advanced Materials, a Pescarolo Sport partner that has a sponsoring agreement with the stable to supply Araldite® adhesives and rapidprototyping materials, like the RenShape® BM 5055 tooling board, used to develop the new car. Once all the board plies have been bonded together, the master model is machined on a five-axis cutting machine to create the final mould cavity. Several of the RenShape® epoxy boards highly machinable, with good dimensional stability and a very fine surface structure are used in the master model, which is then coated with gelcoat to give an extremely smooth surface after polishing. The prepreg carbon plies are then placed, and the structure is autoclaved. The moulds are made in carbon so More information Henri Pescarolo’s track record Besides his F3 and F2 titles, his seven years in F1 racing, his many appearances in the Paris-Dakar Rally, and his interest in flying machines, we note especially that Henri Pescarolo has 22 wins in Sports Prototype Racing championships under his belt, and that he has competed 33 times in the most famous endurance race of all, the Le Mans 24-hour race, with four wins to his credit. Can anyone imagine a better track record? Fig. 5: Pescarolo Sport - third place at Le Mans 24-hour race - 2007. During the crash test, the very lightweight chassis (just over 80 kg) has additional weight put on it, so that what is projected against the wall will weigh about 1075 kg, the authorized racing weight for the car, including driver and a full fuel tank. At the front of the chassis, there is an all-carbon part called a crash box, which has to absorb just the right amount of energy from the impact so that the driver’s compartment, in particular, will remain intact. After the crash, the chassis is closely examined to make sure there are no cracks or damages. that the coefficient of expansion will be the same as that of the final parts, which are also made of autoclaved carbon-prepreg materials. The finished chassis are then sent to Pescarolo’s Sarthe site, where the cars are assembled. Apart from the upcoming races, the next important step for Pescarolo Sport is to create a full-scale composite model for wind-tunnel testing of the aerodynamic properties. More information: www.huntsman.com Araldite® and RenShape® are registered trademarks of Huntsman Corporation or an affiliate thereof in one or more, but not all countries. 1 subscription form (FREE) www.jeccomposites.com/magazine-subscription = 2 additional sources of information in the composite industry JEC Composites Magazine / No34 July-August 2007

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JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #34 - July/August 2007

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #34 - July/August 2007