JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #80 - April 2013 - 34

carbon
53% less weight
TeXtreme® is used on selected parts of
the e-Go aircraft, and the current weight
saving amounts to 53% when compared to
conventional carbon fibre reinforcements.
Painting a TeXtreme® moulded part gives
further mass savings in that the texture of
the raw CFRP is left with fewer pinholes to
fill. Further significant weight savings are
planned on the production aircraft by replacing other CFRP parts with TeXtreme®.

Fig. 2: Where the loads require less CFRP per area Textreme may be used. These parts are where the weight
saving is most significant. The engine cowling is shown here. It covers a large portion of the fuselage and wing
fairing area and allows plenty of access for maintenance and inspection.

available SSDR aircraft.
The founders of e-Go, Giotto Castelli and
Tony Bishop, both live in Cambridge, UK
and have a long experience working in
the aerospace sector during their careers
Giotto as designer and Tony on the business side. Their first step after the win was
to develop the design further and test the
market.
On the design side 3D design tools were
used to ensure that the airplane would fit
together properly and weigh under 115
kg to meet the SSDR category rules. The
design was also made to meet the LSA,
ELA and microlight standards. But more
significantly, it stretches the performance
boundaries of a class having the constraints of SSDR, resulting in cruise speeds
almost double that of other similar aircraft.

composite reinforcements.
TeXtreme® Spread Tow fabrics are produced by interlacing Spread Tow tapes
of desired fibres to obtain a virtually
crimp-free fabric with straight orientation
of fibres. The result is a unique reinforcement with the mechanical performance of
a cross-plied UD and the handling ease of
a fabric.

In the case of e-Go airplanes, the main
advantage in using TeXtreme® comes from
the availability of very low areal weights
in the form of CFRP – hence its specific
properties of strength and stiffness. Microlight aircraft, particularly in the SSDR
category, tend to have low wing loading
and distributed loads that require little
structural material, especially in regions
such as wing skins, which constitute the
biggest percentage of the structural mass.
Aside from stability issues, which can be
tackled in different ways, the constraint
there is often the availability of materials
that are thin enough, and therefore light
enough, to allow an optimized design. n
More information:
www.textreme.com

New category of composite reinforcements
During the structural design, it was
evident that conventional carbon fibre
reinforcements did not allow for a more
optimized solution. For many components, using TeXtreme® overcame this
problem.
Spread tow reinforcements (including
both spread tow fabrics and spread tow
UD tapes) are a relatively new category of

Fig. 3: The back of the fuselage is shown here with the mock-up engine in place. The firewall is part of the
fuselage lay-up which used a mix of 2x2 Twill and TeXtreme®. Details are very important to me and each one
needs a reason to be.

34 jec composites magazine / No80 April 2013

http://www.textreme.com

JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #80 - April 2013

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