JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #35 - September 2007 - 52

USERS’ PLATFORM Successful partners Ring around innovative winding Pressure tank systems are gaining in importance, especially in the automotive industry with cars powered by natural gas or hydrogen. As a result, demand is growing for efficient mass-production of lightweight, high-quality tanks. Thermoset winding is an established technology in the area of fibre-reinforced pressure tanks. In the short or medium term, 100,000 tank systems per annum will be required just to meet the automotive needs generated by hydrogen technology. As part of the European StorHy project, Prf. Alois K. Schlarb and Dr Ralf Schledjewski from the IVW (Institut für Verbundwerkstoffe, or Composite Materials Institute) in Kaiserslautern, Germany, worked with Mr Axel Seifert from Material S.A (Zaventem, Belgium) to find a way to produce pressure vessels at a reasonable cost. Composites are essential High-pressure hydrogen vessels have to withstand an operating pressure of 700 bar, and the minimum burst pressure for them is 2,100 bar. In order to obtain lightweight tanks for such pressures, carbon fibres are used. A cylindrical shape is obviously needed for this application, and this type of composite structure can be obtained in a single shot using wet filament winding. The process needs to be made more cost-effective to reach the large-scale automotive market and allow the development of hydrogen technology in this segment. system equipped with eight feed eyes (Fig. 1) distributed around the perimeter of a ring (Fig. 2). Each arm can simultaneously impregnate and lay down More information StorHy project Funded by the European Commission and focused on hydrogen storage for automotive applications, the StorHy consortium carries out R&D work covering the whole spectrum of hydrogen storage technologies with its 34 partners (car makers, gas suppliers, research institutions ) from 13 European countries. The sub-project “Pressure Vessel” examines lightweight compressed gas vessels made of a metal or a polymer liner in a fibre-reinforced composite structure. more freedom in the choice of winding angles. The multi-feed-eye ring also allows winding more complex geometries and requires a significantly shorter gantry system, due to the radial movement of the feed eyes. The resulting change in the winding patterns with significantly fewer crossing points of the rovings leads to better utilisation of the fibre performance Simultaneous lay-down It took the IVW several years to develop and build the prototype for a winding Fig. 2: Ring winding head. Fig. 1: Zoom in on a rotatable feed eye. four 12k carbon-fibre rovings accurately, even in the dome sections. The system allows three times as much material throughput as comparable conventional winding systems, at the same processing velocity. These rotatable feed eyes give JEC Composites Magazine / No35 September 2007

JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #35 - September 2007

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #35 - September 2007