Tubular heating element

carbon fiberfor the aerospace industry

As an independent, national centre for the world-class design and manufacture of composites, our client’s testing production capabilities were already meeting multi-sector demands. With the growth of dry fabric infusion in the aerospace industry, they now needed an innovative solution to increase composite testing. In the industry, there has been a move away from traditional prepreg and autoclaves, to dry fabric infusion. An essential step in infusing dry fabrics is ‘pre-forming’ – a process using heat to activate a binder in the dry fabric to produce a semi-structural ‘pre-form’. This method has seen increasing growth in aerospace structures, specifically in the manufacture of stringers, the structural supports within an aircraft wing that prevents buckling and bending under compression. Ceramicx have developed an extensive knowledge of the aerospace industry, with the necessary experience of heating composite products, including the curing of thermoset resins. With infrared offering consistent and notable advantages over traditional convection ovens, we demonstrated how infrared can offer significant savings in the heating of stringers during the ‘pre-forming’ process, and how a bespoke control and system design would prove crucial to our client’s success. Following a process of further research and development, our designs and plans were approved. We then custom-built the IR oven and its own 12-zone heat control system–optimising the oven for efficiency and appropriate processing parameters–all to the client’s specifications. The trapezoid shape created by the reflectors matches the composite pre form shape.