JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #80 - April 2013 - 12

sports & leisure
ard equipment. The material
has attracted a great deal of
attention in the industry,
winning the ISPO Award
two years in a row, and most
recently the ISPO Gold
Award through Bcomp’s
customer Stöckli.
Thus, this technology is expected to play an important
role in the journey towards
lighter skis and snowboards,
offering a high-performance
solution to the strong trend
for freeride skiing and touring in the backcountry.

Flax fibre preforms
In parallel to its bCores,
Bcomp has developed a
range of flax fibre preforms
called ampliTex©, comprising different types of flax
reinforcement fabrics. This
product portfolio is articulated around the power ribs
technology (patent pending), a novel structural flax
fibre composite boosting
the flexural stiffness of
plates and flexural strength
of tubes. In both cases,
the performance can be

increased by up to 250%,
while adding only 5-20%
in weight compared with a
standard flax fibre composite structure. Despite having
a Young’s modulus significantly lower than carbon
fibres, the density of flax
fibres is about 30% lower
than the one of carbon.
This is a great advantage
in applications designed
for flexural stiffness, thus
strongly influenced by the
product’s wall thickness: for
plates of equal weight, the
flax composite plate will be
significantly thicker. Locally
enhanced by the local ribs,
this high thickness will lead
to a flexural plate stiffness
comparable to the carbon
composite plate (Figure 2).
This technology uses the
limited compressibility of
natural fibre yarns with
specific composite processing methods to design thinwalled reinforced structures
with meso-scale ribs, which
are tailorable in thickness,
direction and density. This

Fig. 3: Example of ampliTex© ±45° power ribs fabric (left), and a plate made
from it (right)

Fig. 4: Biomobile.ch, using the ampliTex © 0/90° power ribs fabric as a
reinforcement

approach requires a relatively thick yarn with the right
amount of twist: too little
and the low compression
resistance during processing will lead to a collapse of
the ribs, too much and the
misalignment of the fibers
will reduce the mechanical
properties of the resulting
composite.
Figure 3 shows an example of the ampliTex© ±45°
power ribs fabric and a shell
element for a transportation
part with the power ribs.

The power ribs technology
is a good example of how
natural fibre composites can
be used to replace or reinforce carbon fibre composites in specific applications,
offering a credible alternative in terms of performance
and cost cutting. In parallel
to the shell applications,
joint developments are currently on-going with several
leading bicycle manufacturers. The aim is to substitute
some of the off-axis carbon
fibre layers in the bicycle
frames with the power ribs

Numerous applications

Fig. 2: Comparison of specific flexural stiffness of plates made from different
materials

12 jec composites magazine / No80 April 2013

There are numerous applications for this material in
industries such as sports and
leisure, consumer electronics and mobility. Bcomp is
currently working on several projects with different
partners to develop highly
cost-effective shell elements
with exceptional stiffnessto-weight ratios, aimed at
applications ranging from
laptop casings to body parts
of electric vehicles.

Fig. 5: Flax composite tube with
ampliTex© ±45° power ribs reinforcement inside
http://www.Biomobile.ch
JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #80 - April 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #80 - April 2013
